Black screen with cursor after login, then computer won't start up to login

Hi, I'm using a Dell Inspiron 15 with Windows 8 and was having an issue where videos were not playing and restarted my computer, left the room for a minute and came back to see it was updating. When the update completed I was able to log on, but there was only a black screen with a cursor. I tried restarting my computer and had the same result, and followed the first bit of advice in this thread (here) as the issue described was the same, and successfully opened the task manager to have the system boot in safe mode. However, when I restarted my computer it did not progress past the boot screen where I was greeted with nothing but a black screen. This has happened every time I have restarted and I am unable to access safe mode or log on normally, although I can reach the Advanced Startup Options screen.

Is there any way to fix this issue?