How do I make Windows 7 boot further than a blank screen with only a mouse cursor?

My Windows 7 machine was powered down without logging out first. Now, when booting the PC Windows 7 does not completely start. Instead, it boots to a completely black screen with a mouse cursor that can be moved around but not used to interact with anything. In other words there are no icons or tool bars.

Ctrl+Alt+Del does not bring up the Task Manager. Booting to Safe Mode renders the same result.

This is known as a KSOD (blacK Screen Of Dead), it's not to be confused with the more popular term BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death); a KSOD happens after the login screen where as you describe the screen would turn blank/black with only a mouse cursor to interact with exactly nothing.

At this point, the OS is supposed to load the shell. If, however, the shell that needs to be loaded has been set to something different or the shell itself has been corrupted/damaged then it might not be able to load as you could see here. PrevX has written an easy fix which you can grab by clicking on this link to fix the KSOD issue, this simply does the following:

• Correct the ACL permissions of the following key to the default permissions:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

• Recreate a REG_SZ string called Shell and set it to explorer.exe.

You need to put back explorer.exe by simply executing sfc /scannow if it is broke.

In case you can't get to CTRL+ALT+DEL or Safe Mode, you'll need to start from the installation medium:

1. Insert the installation medium, get to the recovery mode but don't let it recover things.

2. Start up the command line.

3. In case you want to manually adjust registry changes, start regedit and load the hives in:

   C:\Windows\System32\config

4. In case you want to automatically fix this issue, run the following two commands:

   • sfc /scannow to fix Operating System files, which should put explorer.exe back.

   • fixshell.exe, the tool you downloaded from PrevX, which fixes the registry.

Be sure that you have tried to upgrade your graphics drivers, because you might not have a mouse cursor at all and be reading this. Other people report to remove media like DVDs or Bluray disks, which might interfere with your boot...

I just spent a day with this problem. My machine ran too well in safe mode to have a hardware problem or even a virus.

Removing and reinstalling the nVidia drivers would fix the problem for one boot but the problem would return on the next. I'd bet a black screen with a functional cursor but noting else. Sometimes letting the computer sit for hours would fix the problem but even that would only work some of the time.

After working on this for about a day and including about 50 reboots, it turns out that simply removing the blu-ray DVD I'd forgotten in the D: dive fixed the problem. Apparently the computer looked at the D: drive and put the display adapter in a mode that was incompatible with my monitors.

Just a goofy disk in one of the drives....

I had the same issue, but it appeared to be the video driver... windows took the HDMI port as primary screen while there wasn't a screen connected to the HDMI port... so I only had a blank screen and a mouse pointer on my screen connected to the vga port... I was able to fix that using the right mouse button and "personalize" and then disabled the primary screen and made the other one (the VGA port) primary.

OTOH I've also had a similar issue with Vista AFTER I changed the structure of my partitions using Acronis Disk Manager, then I wasn't able to get a context-menu out of right mouse button. Just the mouse pointer and a blank screen... I did get the logon screen when pressing ctrl-alt-del though, but couldn't do anything but shut down.
Actually I still have this problem now (but I dual boot to Windows 7 RC 1 all the time, so it is not actually a problem any more, but I would like to know a workaround if you find one!)

i had a computer with the same problem.the duser.dll file was corrupt. but there are more files involved in the user environment loading process. get yourself a DOK and ubuntu cd and try replacing the boot files of windows. another possibility is to connect the HD to another computer and use offline sfc. sfc /scannow /windir=x:\windows /offbootdir=x: