This is the weirdest thing i've seen yet. First, i've made no changes hardware or software wise to this PC. I simply came in and booted it up and once the PC boots the screen goes black, but it's still on and I can see my cursor. Keyboard shortcuts don't work for opening anything except for ctl+alt+del. When I ctl+alt+del it pops up fine and I have all my options on that screen. Also, when it's booting up all the POST screens are fine and I can get into the BIOS. I've tried booting into safe mode, swapped the ram, reseated the graphics card, etc... with no luck. I've never seen this before, has anyone else?

I've also tried different monitors and graphics cards.

Update: when it asks me for my username and password, that screen appears fine, but as soon as I log in, the screen turns black.

Re-install the video card drivers. Re-install windows but make a backup first. If there's nothing you need go ahead and format it. If its black still contact Dell.

Formatting the drive and reinstalling windows is the easy solution. I want to know why this is happening. I'm running the mcafee stinger right now to make sure it's not a virus of some sort. It's not under warranty anymore or I would have already had Dell fix it!

During that black screen with the cursor on it, the operating system is checking out the driver files to see if they are all good. If it hangs during this then you have a bad driver...the problem is that it can be any of them but the video and other hardware drivers would be the first to look at... control panel > admin tools > system viewer open up the viewer log files and see if there is an error and it will show you a stsrting place to look into In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

It does sound like it's a sofware issue. If you are running a McAfee utility, I'm assuming you are able to function when booting from a cd, correct? Perhaps you use your recovery cd to boot and then run the system restore feature from the command prompt to try loading a restore point from when the system still completely booted.