Turn the computer on and start tapping the f8 key before anything even shows on the screen. If you get that far and you see a menu, Arrow up to Safe Mode and hit enter and wait until you see a desktop. It won't look the same as what you are used to.
If you can get that far, type in system restore in the Start search box. System Restore should come up, click on that .once the restore screen comes up, just follow the prompts and restore to a time and date before the trouble started.
That may or may not fix the problem, but it's a good starting point and you won't lose any data or mess up the computer.
I have a Dell XPS M1530 Windows Vista laptop. While watching a video
for a class online, the laptop froze and would not respond to anything,
including Ctrl/Alt/Delete. I manually turned it off by holding the
power button. When I turned it back on, it made the usual sounds it
does while starting up and reaching the desktop, except it was not
showing anything on the screen. So I shut it off again by pressing the
power button. Now while trying to turn on it has been stuck on the Dell
logo screen with the bar only a quarter full. I'm afraid to mess with
it anymore until I can get help on what to do.
I'm really hoping I won't have to lose any memory because I have some very important work on it I have yet to back up.
Thank you for any help or suggestions!

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