Black screen with cursor only

I have recently updated to windows 7 professional and cleared my old OS. (3 days ago) I have been running the system and it has been just fine until this evening.
This evening I suddenly got a black screen with just the mouse showing.
I have an Asus P5Q Pro Motherboard and the Graphics card is a GEforce GTX260
When I reboot the system it gets to the windows starting screen
Then I get a cursor that blinks a few times and then it suimply stays black and nothing happens.

I already tried using the operating system restore disk and reinstalling, but the outcome was the same.
Also booting in safe mode works and I can do anything needed in there, but once going back to regular boot, it does not go.
Thoughts?
 
Not really a solution but something you can try:

When you've got the black screen with the cursor, do Ctrl + Alt + Del and in the task manager choose File - New task run.
then in the box typ explorer.exe

That should get your windows taskbar back. At least then you can do something.
 
A black screen with the mouse pointer active usually means the the video driver is corrupt. What version of Windows was installed before Windows 7? Is Windows 7 32 or 64 bits?
 
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