Vista black screen of death

[G13]

The computer turns on fine, but after the login screen it goes black. I can still see and use the mouse icon, but there is no desktop. The screen is even blank when I try to go into safe mode! None of the fixes I find online are working, and a good portion of them go over my head. I'm not a computer wizard, I have no idea what I'm doing. If anyone knows how to fix it, if even temporarily, I would be grateful for any assistance.

[CimminyCricket]

If you have the disk that came with your computer, put that in and use I think it is f12 to go to the boot menu and tell your computer to boot from the CD drive instead of the hard drive and there should be some options to repair your start up. Use that and it should work.

Or you can hit ctrl alt delete and see if you can at least view the task manager. You may have gotten a virus that disabled the explorer, so from the task manager you should go to file start new task and type in 'explorer'.

[G13]

ctrl-alt-delete was the first trick I tried, but nothin' happened. I'll have to find the disc. :-/