After the last update for Windows Vista came through, I discovered that I had an unusable laptop on my hands. And, it is the laptop I have set up for work. Oh, joy.
Vista would look like it was loading but would go to a black screen with an error referencing explorer.exe after the log on screen. I search the ‘net for quite a few hours for help with my Vista black screen of death, and tried a few fixes, all of which failed.
All of our computers are Dells around here, so I finally headed on out to the Dell support site and found the solution to the Vista black screen problem quickly: reinstall Vista from Dell’s factory settings. In other words, format the drive. Sure, my data is backed up, but I would be waving goodbye to all the tweaks and conveniences I had set up on that laptop to make my work easier.
So, the reformatting and reinstalling of Vista has taken place and I will attempt to revive settings and software I had on that laptop. Been doing my work on my trusty 3-year old XP laptop (oh, how I wish I would have left my work-related browser settings on that computer). Oh well, productivity will suffer a bit in the short term, but I’ve learned something about backing up settings and profiles along with data.
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This is not a fix but, it will allow you to use your PC until you can find a fix. I have the same problem and when I get to the black screen I press Ctrl, Alt, Del then select start task manager. Go to New Task and type explorer.exe and a windows explorer will open. Hope this helps some.
This is when Windows Home Server’s automatic nightly backups would have come in handy. Every time I read a story like this, I look over at my HP MediaSmart and smile. It was expensive, but worth every penny–and I have not even needed to restore a backup–YET. I just ordered another 1.5 TB for it.