Windows won't boot

[eso]

Well I forgot my password so I had to create a new account.. (darn firefox making so we don't need to remember them)

Anyways, the other day I was looking for drivers for my phone, and one of those pop-ups came up that said you got viruses etc... An icon appeared in the bottom right corner, and some window popped up. I was trying to close them using task manager processes and all but it didn't work. Computer stopped opening certain programs, acted slowly, so I booted into safe mode and ran some scans, nothing came up. Now, when I boot up normally, I get the windows loading screen, but instead of a log-in screen, I just get a black screen with my mouse pointer. I running windows vista SP2, 32 bit.

Should I just go ahead and reinstall windows?

 

[winslow33]

I had the exact same problem in Windows XP. I'm not sure if it works in Vista, but the program Malwarebytes Anti-Malware got rid of it all for me, working fine ever since. Give it a shot and see if it does anything.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

 

[cboucher]

You could attempt to run the recovery console so you can run fixmbr, but you since it looks like you have contracted a nasty virus/spyware/adware, whatever, you'd be better off reinstalling at this point. It always good to have a nice, clean system anyways.