Okay.... so my friend asked me to work on his laptop for him, and I agreed because I usually fix everything pretty fast, but this one has me stumped. When you START up Windows, it goes through the loading screen, then to a blank black screen with a cursor. The login screen never comes up. I went through all of the fixes, such as registry edits, and nothing WORKED. I think it has something to do with the USB ports, because this is the weird part. With nothing plugged in the ports, it stays on the windows load screen for about 10 seconds, then goes to the solid black. If there is something in the USB port, it will stay on the loading screen forever. As soon as I remove the USB device, the black screen comes up. I checked bios and made sure that it's boothing from the hard drive and not USB, so I'm at a loss... any ideas?

Thanks!How did you edit the registry if you can't boot to the OS?
Boot to the Vista CD and try a repair.i just opened the command prompt through the vista repair cd and typed regedit there. but the fix that worked for most people said that you changed a specific value in the registry, but it was already what it is supposed to be! i tried the vista repair and it says something about "UNABLE to repair" "if you've connected any devices such as mp3 players and such, please disconnect them and try again." that's another thing that i think points to something weird with the USBs. is there a way of uninstalling USB drivers and then REINSTALLING them?based on my experience its harddrive problem. usually corrupt boot sector or bad sector. try chkdsk /r while in recovery console.i BELIVE that is a software problem now that u are in black screen press control,alt & delete than u get task manager from there u con restore to ealier point that work i have tryd it tooBased on the info given... editing the Registry was not the solution...