Black screen

I've done a reboot on my computer and now it has a black screen with no cursor. How do I fix this????

I had a working install for over a month now on a test machine.
As of the last update from MS the other day, which I allowed to patch this morning...

My machine boots to a black screen right after the initial load with the small window pane and circling load indicator below.
I can see drive activity for a while but screen remains black.
I tried loadind DVD in and went to prompt so to enable legacy F8 function, which worked ONCE for me on reboot
when I made a failed effort to repair.

Diagnostic run after that from DVD boot failed to find issues to repair.

I'm stumped now and am damn glad I have not allowed Win 10 on any of my 2 other 'production' machines.

Last update has essentially bricked that test machine.

This all happened to me after the latest update. Not sure how to fix I do not have the disk

A update to my prior post.
I found a solution in my situation and Windows 10 now boots as it should, no more black screen.

Test Machine mentioned above is:
Mobo: Abit IP-35 Pro
CPU: Intel Core 2 duo E8500 @3.16Ghz (default clock)
4 GB RAM
Yes, it is rather ancient.

As I said above, it had worked fine with Win 10 for over a month but last update caused black screen after initial Window pane
splash (before one could log in on Win 10)



I went into bios and discovered a setting for graphics boot card
PCI
or
PCIE
I had mine set to PCI (Why that was I don't know, but it was working fine for over a month)
So I set it to PCIE which would be more proper as I do have a PCIE card (GTX970 I had laying around) in that machine.

Once that was set to PCIE all was copacetic again.

So, something MS did in last update was more picky than before and in my hardware case, Windows 10 now expects
that bios setting to be set correctly. That is my presumption.



OH, the info that set me on this course of investigation was from this thread:
Black screen with mouse pointer after cold boot Windows 10 Technical - Microsoft Community

Below is part of the post I read that had me going on right path.....

out of the 12 pages here, I've seen one person respond that they tried changing to HDMI and one person respond that they changed their output to their native connection through their BIOS. both of these claimed it fixed their problem. many others here and on other threads also responded that using your keyboard to access the start menu and changing settings from there (though you can't see what you're doing on the ghost screen) also fixed their problem.

i have had this issue through 3 versions of Windows; 7, 8.1, now 10 and with different GPUs from Nvidia and ATI\AMD. using the keyboard on the ghost screen worked 90% of the time and changing my settings to DVI-D through the BIOS worked with my 990FX board.
so, depending on your setup one of these three options will fix the common "ghost display" problem. if you're not going to read through and try the suggestions, then you're on your own. **** about it here won't fix your problem or anyone else's.

How do I get into the bios to change or find the graphics card.

Julieb said:

How do I get into the bios to change or find the graphics card.

Well that depends on PC.
Most PC's tell you what key to press to get into BIOS on boot. Usually but not always it is the DEL key.
I suggest you read your PC manual before proceeding.
If you don't understand PC BIOS or settings research before altering and be sure to write down any changes you made
so you can revert if need be to what was.
Unlikely you will find the same BIOS settings I listed as my test machine is rather ancient 2006 era.
YOu might want to read that thread too, all of it, that I listed as not all solutions to this were the same.
It might in your case be as simple as swapping video output cable to another output on PC.
Bottom line, what worked for me may not have anything to do with what is going on with your situation.

Do take care with BIOS alterations and refer to manual or other online sources for your specific hardware first.

DurkaDurkaDurka said:

I had a working install for over a month now on a test machine.
As of the last update from MS the other day, which I allowed to patch this morning...

My machine boots to a black screen right after the initial load with the small window pane and circling load indicator below.
I can see drive activity for a while but screen remains black.
I tried loadind DVD in and went to prompt so to enable legacy F8 function, which worked ONCE for me on reboot
when I made a failed effort to repair.

Diagnostic run after that from DVD boot failed to find issues to repair.

I'm stumped now and am damn glad I have not allowed Win 10 on any of my 2 other 'production' machines.

Last update has essentially bricked that test machine.

There are quite a few possible solutions for this issue:
1) DDU Cleanup and reinstall Display Drivers (Intel AND your GPU driver)
2) Windows Update Backout (but this means when the next update comes up, it may hoop it again and you are stuck with the original Win10, which is not very good)
3) Windows Reset (rarely works)
4) Clean re-install of Win10 (really?) - ok it worked until the November update was applied again.

All the above are when Win10 update corrupts the OS (apparently this does happen, but rarely...)

And finally the best Solution which should work depending on your PC model (and if they have a newer BIOS firmware):

5) BIOS update (After hours and days of struggling with many proposed solutions from Microsoft (perform clean re-install), Distributor took a look and couldn't fix it, I updated the BIOS in 5 minutes on my brand new machine and that did the trick!)