Question : black screen and flashing cursor

Hi,

on a laptop when booting, right after the manufacturer splash screen comes out a password field (I think the bios?) and after inserting the password it hangs on the flashing cursor (upper left corner).

I tried ultimatebootcd, and it let me use it after the password, I ran one of the hdd tools (hdd is a Toshiba, hence no specific tool), and it seemed ok, I ran the memory test and it's ok, I ran one of the av tools, and it reported this:

===========================================
No viruses found in memory.
Master boot sector could be infected with an unknown virus.
Viruses cannot be disinfected unless they are identified.
Boot sector could be infected with an unknown virus.
Viruses cannot be disinfected unless they are identified.
No viruses were found in MBRs or hard disk boot sectors.
===========================================
That ^ av was not updated, and I am now running an online scan on the hdd, from another pc into which I plugged it.

Thank you.

Answer : black screen and flashing cursor

The blinking cursor look is no good.  The cause can be anywhere from a damaged partition to a failing hard drive to a virus.

Hiren's BootCD has Hard Drive diagnostics for Toshiba, as well as other drive manufacturers.  It also has McAfee AV DOS scanning and so many other tools.  Give it a shot.

You can also try booting to your Windows Setup disk and enter the recovery console (first "R") to get to a command prompt and issue a CHKDSK /R to try to repair the partition.