Laptop black screen on boot, explorer.exe not loading automatically.

[David Tennant]

Hi, my sister has been having a problem with her laptop in which when booting it up she only gets a black screen (cursor works) I've tried my best to help her, booted it into safe mode with Command prompt, manually loaded Explorer.exe and everything works fine but for obvious reasons she can't really use her laptop in safe mode. I've tried quite a few different methods but I can't figure out a way to start explorer.exe when booting the laptop normally, maybe there is something I can do while in safe mode?

One other thing, her laptop is an Acer 4520 and this started to happen once she deleted the Acer software however she nor I are 100% certain that this is what started the problem (seeing as I have no real way of looking at her laptop myself as she lives in Hong kong therefore helping her is three times as hard).

Thankyou for any suggestions.

[editline]15th November 2010[/editline]

Forgot to mention, I've already tried all the key combination's I can think of (CTRL+ALT+DEL, CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) but nothing seems to work which is odd, this problem occurs right after the welcome screen (apparently), the boot appears to be fine and in safe mode (after launching Explorer.exe manually) the laptop works seemingly fine.

Also, I checked the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon to be specific) in safe mode to see if the correct value was set when trying to load explorer.exe and it's perfectly normal.

[Nilrus]

format and reinstall windows

[David Tennant]

Obviously that would be the simplest and most effective answer but a last resort seeing as she uses it for university and other important things, although she can back her files up in safe mode I'm sure there's another answer to the problem that doesn't involve reinstalling windows.

[Asna]

start in safe mode and use command promt
chkdsk x /r

where x is your windows hard drive
let it run and restart.

[{ABK}AbbySciuto]

Run a virus scan.

[Anderen2]

Try running Combofix([url]http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix[/url]) or other antivirus software
some useful links:
Dr. Web CureIt([url]http://www.freedrweb.com/cureit/[/url])
AVG LiveCD([url]http://www.techmixer.com/avg-rescue-disk-free-avg-bootable-antivirus-cd/[/url])

[lavacano]

[QUOTE=David Tennant;26077648]this problem occurs right after the welcome screen (apparently)[/QUOTE]

Before she logs in or after? Or is there only one account with no password?