Black screen with cursor

Great job! Both you and simrick did a lot of work on this. Congrats to both of you. I am glad you have it running right again.

NevRon said:

I performed the last suggestion - searched Task Manager for explorer.exe (also looked for Windows Explorer), It was not there. Entered explorer.exe at services tab as instructed (simrick). Still black screen. Then windows update popped up (shut down and install). I clicked OK and it installed, shut down, opened - completed installation, shut down and restarted again. Signed in and desktop is back :) :) :)

FYI - I checked Task Manager after fix and found "Windows Explorer" on the list of processes, which was not there before.
The update was KB3140768 (cumulative update).
Thank you all for your help and patience.
Ron
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Brilliant! So glad you got that sorted!
Now, turn system restore on (if it's off), and set a couple of restore points.
Turn off Fast Startup (see post #5).
Go ahead and mark the thread as solved. :)

Nofsdad said:

I tried to follow along but it didn't work for me. Going to go through it step by step again. I was lucky enough to have an application nag screen which allows me to get my browser started otherwise I'd really be in deep soup since this is my only access to the Internet. My problem is exactly identical to the OP's. Certainly hope this isn't going to be a trend.

Hi.
Ctrl+Alt+Del will bring up Task Manager - usually even with a blank screen.
Then see if explorer.exe is in the list of running processes. If so, select it, end the task and then File>Run>explorer.exe to open it again.