[drummerguy101]

I started My Windows XP computer (its running service pack 3)
I heard the XP startup tune but all I could see was a black screen and the cursor.

nothing worked, not even Ctrl+Alt+delete

I just had to turn off the power at the wall, I then restarted it and it worked straight away
there is nothing strange in the event log, its just the usual stuff, no errors etc

what happened?

note: this has happened to me before but instead of a black screen, the screen was a mass of jumbled coloured squares

[kloodge]

I would suspect a problem with the video driver.