Computer wont start

Hey guys, I apologize if this is in the wrong place. But I am haveing a problem with Vista i belive. I just installed Real War Rouge states(yes I know its a older game) But it asked me if I want to install DirectX 8.1 and I said yes.

Well, i started playing, and the sound did not work, so i did some checks and the problem is on the games end. Well I wanted it fixed, so i rebooted. It went though its normal startup, but it did not come up to my log in screen. All it showed was a black screen, with only the mouse. So i inserted the boot CD from Norton Ghost.
I tried to recovery, but.....I did not have a recovery point.
It wont even start in safe mode.
Here are my specs.

Nivida 8600
Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4
2 gigs of ram
AMD 64 x2 Dual core +6000


Plz help if you can.

You are getting only the mouse icon on a black screen?

Try hitting CTRL+Shift+Esc to bring up task manager and see if Explorer.exe is hung or has crashed, restart if possible. If that is not it then it may be an Nvidia driver issue, what driver are you currently using?

Ohiou_ that worked. I finally got to the system restore before i installed Direct 8.1 thanks!