Troubleshooting Black Screen with Cursor

Friends laptop boots up to a blank/black screen with a movable mouse cursor and hangs right there. No keyboard commands work. System can only be shut down by holding power for 5 sec.

I backed up her data, and did a windows repair via the installation disc.

Didnt change a thing...

I was sure that was gonna fix it now i could use some suggestions. Any Ideas what to troubleshoot next?

*Note* before doing the above i tried the typical things like, Last known good configuration, halt on error, safe mode, vga mode. all of those yeild the same results Blank screen with a movable cursor.

*Edit* Running CHKDSK C: /R ..... seems to be the next logical step.

*Edit* CHKDSK found errors and fixed them, however still boots to a black screen with movable cursor *sigh* im running out of ideas

yea after chk disk didn't work i gave up and just formatted the damn thing. BTW I REALLY HATE DELL's Driver downloads. OMG They mass produce these laptops and they don't even have their own driver page. They have a generic driver page that has like 8 different network drivers to pick from... I did my detective work in the BIOS but still. There are 3 devices i couldn't figure what the hell they were because dell is retarded, never gonna buy from them ever ever haha. Glad it wasn't my laptop. Anyways i got all the components working, audio, network, wireless, guess those 3 devices weren't very useful.

*end rant*

your prolly right, and i think i did download a chipset package from dell, not sure which i got, but i dont care its not my laptop, and im not getting paid squat for what i did. so f*** it.

*** in take advantage of me. /sigh