Blank screen with flashing cursor upper left corner

Computer is HP with XP. I was downloading drivers for my cell phone USB
cable. After it downloaded it said I must re-boot for it to take effect. I
did this and now when it turns on there is a blank screen with a flashing
cursor in the upper left corner. Nothing else. What can I do? I must have
downloaded a virus or something, who knows. How can I get it to boot up so I
can see what is wrong?

 

Restart and press the F-key for the Advanced Boot Menu (on my computer it is
F10). Choose Last Known Good Configuration and see if that resolves the
restart problem.

 

Correction: That's the F8 key, not F10. Sorry about that.

 

Hi,

I have a PC with 4 drives + an MO drive inside.
Vista Ultimate 64 permanently running - 24/7

At random times in Disk Manager, one of the drives - complete with
logical drives on it, goes to Read Only. The whole drive hardware is now
read only.
Shut down, start up again from cold and its OK.
I haven't logged yet whether its only one drive or if it swaps to
another of the four.
Can anyone assist ?
Tried Microsoft but cannot find any results that match.
The newsgroup has one thread about files & folders but mine is the whole
drive, as in the hardware driver seems faulty.

Gigabyte 965 m/b
4gb Ram
Gigabyte ATI 3870 graphics card
All drives & single DVD writer is Sata, mix of Sata 1 & 2

Thanks for any sugestions

Mike