Urgent: Computer issues, need help ASAP!

Alright, here’s the deal—my laptop died on me, my charger slipped out, and I just plugged it back in and tried to reboot. Once it finally kicked on, everything seemed fine at first, but then this "My Computer" window just popped up out of nowhere. When I closed it, the whole screen went pitch black—literally nothing but a white mouse cursor floating in the void. I tried a hard restart, and again, "My Computer" pops up, and I managed to get online through it, but if I minimize any windows, it's just a black screen and a cursor. Is my OS trashed or did the hardware actually die on me?? :O

Hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete to pull up your Task Manager. Click "New task" at the bottom, type in explorer.exe, and just hit enter...

William Richardson12 said:Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to pull up Task Manager—look for "New Task" at the bottom, type in explorer.exe, and hit enter.

But nothing happened—it just popped open My Computer and everything else is still just a black screen :O

Just grab Malwarebytes, run a full scan, and wipe whatever junk is on your PC...

William Richardson12 said:Look, just grab Malwarebytes, run a full scan, and scrub the system clean.

Already did. Found like 1,650 infected files—or whatever they call them—and wiped them all out. Rebooted the laptop too. Still nothing. Everything's exactly the same :/

Then you're stuck trying to run a macOS repair if you actually know what you're doing, otherwise just call someone who does... 🤷

William Richardson12 said:Then you're stuck trying to run a macOS repair if you actually know your way around—otherwise, just call a pro who does. 🤷

That sounds like total gibberish to me 😁 I won't be able to get to that for a few days... is it fine to just leave the computer running like this in the meantime?

Mind you, I did try one thing—I typed %systemroot%\system32\rstrui.exe into a new task and followed the prompts... I rolled it back to a restore point from a few days ago, but after everything finished and the machine rebooted, nothing changed. Still the same mess. 😁

He'll be just fine, as far as I can tell...

William Richardson12 said:He’ll be just fine, as far as I can tell.

Thanks anyway—appreciate you taking the time to help me out.🙂

It seems there has been a slight misunderstanding here. You were actually recommending system repair, yet it appears she went ahead and performed a system restore instead. 😁

Thomas Fisher said:I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding here—he suggested system repair but you actually ran a system restore instead. 😁

No misunderstanding—I made it clear I already did that. Just thinking ahead in case someone else jumps in with advice. 🎉

Just wipe the drive and install a fresh version of macOS, and honestly, your problems are gone... I don't know why you're even stressing over this. Once it's done, you'll finally see if you actually lost any files or if the OS was just acting up. It takes about an hour to get everything installed, and then you can just sit back and relax. ☕