Black screen due to messing with utility program

In trying to clear up a minor nuisance, I really screwed up my Toshiba A65-S125 laptop. I installed a utility program called Autoruns. This program allows you to see what programs and processes your computer is running at startup. It gives you the ability to stop a process by removing the "check mark" from the box. Well I removed what I thought were harmless processes that I wasn't using. When I restarted my computer, all I got had was the Toshiba Welcome screen with my cursor disabled. So I used the power button to manually power down. When restarting, now I just get a black screen. I tried the Toshiba Recovery DVD and followed the directions by holding down the "C" key upon powering on, but it’s not booting. I am assuming the system isn't set up to boot from the CD-ROM. I tried F2 to get into the BIOS; tried F8 Safe Mode; tried F12 for Boot Menu; and tried other function key combinations, but cannot get passed the black screen. I obviously messed up the start-up process and cannot figure out how to get into my system to undo the mess I made. Anyone have any suggestions before I fork out $$$ to get it looked at.

 

When you got into f12 boot menu you selected cd/dvd rom to the top right? Or you can't even get there?

 

I can't get into that or anything else. With a black screen even if the menu did load, I can't see it. I called a computer repair guy and detailed everything I said here, but of course he kept saying he needed to see the laptop. So unless he has some diagnostic tool that can be plugged into my laptop to override the system, I don't see how anyone can get pass this black screen.

 

Did you try ctrl-alt -del?

 

disconnect the HDD (if its accesable) then it might by default boot off of the cd. i had to do this on my desktop, when it was attempting to boot off on 1 HDD, so i disconnected the one that i didnt need, then hooked it back up after the computer booted up.

 

I am up and running! Because you disconnected your HDD and didn't incur any problems, I decided to go ahead with disconnecting and re-connect my hard disk drive to see if it would reset the system. I had contemplated doing this, but didn't want to risk tempering any further. Thanks to your experience, I went for it and it worked.

But I still have the same nuisance that got me in this mess. Does anyone have any idea as to why when I start up my "My Documents" folder automatically opens. It's no big deal. I pinpointed the "explorer.exe" process in the Task Manager that corresponds to this process. That's what got me into all this trouble to begin with. I thought I could find this process in the Autoruns utility and disable it.

 

thats an easy fix.

go to start, and type in msconfig

go to your startup programs tab and look for anything that may open up your documents, then uncheck it. anything else that is unnecessary in your startup (ie messenger, steam etc) strop that

but i believe that the explorer.exe is for all of your windows. ie when you open up your computer, documents and any other files, including your task bar, so its pretty much the whole OS. i wouldnt touch any of that when your disabling startup programs.

i had about 20+ programs that wanted to startup when my computer was starting up, which will really slow it down. u dont need any extra programs to tell you what your starting up with, its already built in. anything that u dont know what it is, then dont disable it, unless u know its a game or a program that u dont need.

i left alot of things that were toshiba (flash cards, power saving utility etc), NVIDIA (GPU), itunes (mobileMe), microsoft corporation (OS, device manager, excluding messenger), realtek (sound), bluetooth, logitech,


hope this helps

 

I've already tried this and do not see anything there that would cause my "My Documents" folder to open. I only have 4 programs listed. One of those programs is the Avast anti-virus program. And it happens that this problem arose immediately after the Avast program was installed. The program isn't saved in the "My Documents" folder so I wouldn't think it is causing the problem, but it sure is a coincidence it happened right after the installation of that software.

In regard to the explorer.exe process, I noticed when I would close the "My Documents" folder, this explorer.exe process would close with no problems thereafter. The process was only a little over 9,000K. And there is another explorer.exe process that runs at startup that is over 27,000K.

 

try this, but be careful. its probably a corrupt registry entry

go to start and type in

Regedit

first go to file, export to save the registry.

next navigate to (on the left side, keep dropping the menu down):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/Winlogon

First double click the name Userinit

the value data should say

C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe,

if it doesnt, copy everything INCLUDING THE " , "

next double click on the name Shell

the value should be explorer.exe

if it isn't, then copy that and paste it in the value data.

that should do it. reboot and tell me what happens

 

Yep, it does appear the problem is here. userinit.exe is duplicated (see below)

C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe,userinit.exe

The Shell is fine, so I just deleted the duplicated userinit.exe and fixed the problem. Thanks so much for all your help!

 

no problem, glad it worked