I am having a problem with my Dell Inspiron 6000. It just started today.

When I turn it on it goes through the dell boot screen fine. but after that when it would normally load windows i get a black screen with a curser blinking in the upper left hand corner..

This computer worked fine yesterday. And i havn't made any software or hardware changes.

Any ideas before I attempt to reformat the hdd?

I did blow it out with compessed airm it seems pretty clean. hardly any dust came out.