I came home from a 4 day trip where I did not have access to internet. I came home from my trip and turned on my computer (Dell XPS m1330 Laptop running Windows Vista) and my virus scan software (McAfee) began automatically downloading updates as it usually does. I proceeded to check my email and Facebook account while it downloaded.

When the download finished, the McAfee "M" in the system tray had a funny green symbol over it and told me that in order for the update to be installed, the computer needed to be restarted. It asked me for my Windows login password, which I (stupidly) gave.

The computer then proceeded to not shut down correctly and now windows will not load. I see the dell start up screen and can get to the boot menu, but no form of Windows will load. I told it to boot in safe mode so that I could run Malware Bytes and some other anti-malware programs that I have, but my Windows desktop will not load at all so I am unable to do anything. All I see is my mouse on a black screen.

Worst case scenario, I will use Killdisk to clean my harddrive and reinstall everything from scratch, but I would really like to try to recover some data (a term paper) before I resort to that.

Any help would be appreciated. I really hope there is something that can be done.

Thank you,
Katie

I feel this may not be malware and I am moving this to the Vista forum for another look first.

Do you have your operating system disk and can you run Startup Repair? http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html

Other things to do are to run the Windows Memory diagnostic: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial146.html
And to run a bootable hard drive diagnostic available from the website of your hard drive manufacturer. There's links to the most common one's here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic28744.html Instructions on how to burn an ISO file are located here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic201611.html