Fix for windows 10 booting to a black screen

Could be that the wallpaper changed to black (solid color). Try changing it again to Picture and select your favorite background.

spapakons said:

Could be that the wallpaper changed to black (solid color). Try changing it again to Picture and select your favorite background.

Screen still black. I'm trying right now to get the profile to pull down from micrsoft again. Apparently if it wasn't using a microsoft account there would be a regedit field to zero out but so far thats not a working option.

Any other options to get a profile working again or if theres a nice way from another profile to force a refresh on that profile or just completly delete it and add it again?

I would create a new local user, copy all data (documents, downloads etc) from my old account, and then delete my old account. I have done that in older Windows versions that user account would be corrupt and unable to login. I would enable Administrator account, create a new user, copy all data and then delete the corrupt account.

Same problem, it was because windows 10 tried to launch from the wrong (external) hard drive (forgot I ask the bios to launch first the usb). I plugged out the USB from the drive and could reboot windows.

chok said:

Same problem, it was because windows 10 tried to launch from the wrong (external) hard drive (forgot I ask the bios to launch first the usb). I plugged out the USB from the drive and could reboot windows.

This is known issue with USB drives. You can solve it if you change the boot priority in BIOS so internal hard disk comes first and then any USB drive, but it is better to disconnect the drive just in case you forget it on the computer (eg home) while you need it for another computer (eg office).

I am having the same issues on a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. Windows 10 Enterprise Edition. A restart fixes it, but the blank screen with cursor is becoming more regular on start-up.

CTRL+DEL does nothing, I literally have to hold the power button down to force it to shut down (the normal shutdown process doesn't work, it just hangs when I try to do that)

That means that a process hangs and Windows wait forever to finish in order to show the desktop or shutdown. You must see the system logs for errors. Open any folder and right-click on the This Computer icon. Select Manage to open Computer Management. See logs, post here to help you.

Univac said:

Hello, today I have encountered this problem after changing a hard drive to a laptop for an SSD. After cloning the disk and going through the odyssey of repairing the UEFI Boot, when I got it to start Windows 10, I got a nice black screen with the mouse pointer. I was looking for a solution and I found this thread in which (I could not read it completely) apparently the problem came from the graphics card and making a session "blind" was getting into windows, or removing the battery, etc. ..
As I did not get anything, I thought of removing the windows password using the cheat to rename the sethc.exe file (this is the Stickykeys window that appears when pressing shift several times in the login window and that it did appear in my wonderful Black screen) and copy the cmd.exe file as sethc.exe. This way when pressing Shift several times I get a console window and could change the windows password. What was my surprise that in doing so, the console prompt would put "D: \ Windows" instead of "C: \ Windows". I thought then that the letter of the system disk had changed and that is why Windows did not work.
Eureka !!!
I followed the instructions of the following link to change the letter assigned to the hard disk and after restart everything works perfectly.

Link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ter-in-windows

I hope to be of help.

ATTENTION, THIS SOLUTION MUST ONLY BE APPLIED IF YOUR SYSTEM UNIT LETTER HAS CHANGED. Otherwise windows would stop working.
If you need more information do not hesitate to ask for it.

Changing the drive letters worked for me.

My computer had many users with passwords but the screen was always black after spining dots, not even in Safe Mode, and there was nothing I could click or do, not even the power options on the right side, nada. I was not in the case where a an update caused this since my computer was restarted many times after the latest update was installed. I think it happened because I added a new hard drive on the Sata port and there was a Windows already installed on one of the partitions so on startup the the drives were somehow exchanged. Even if I removed the extra hard drive my windows was doomed.

What I did:
1. First I wanted to be sure the drive letter was realy change so I started the Recovery Environment by long pressing on power button during the spining dots for two times.
2. Advanced Option > Opened Command prompt and went to the real Windows folder location (on D:) not the one of the RE
3. Renamed the sethc.exe to sethc.bak and cmd.exe to sethc.exe
4. After reboot I pressed five times on Shift so the CMD windows opened and there I could see that it started on D:\Windows\System32 so I was sure the drive letters were changed. Unfortunately I could not do anything on that CMD windows because after 3-4 second the screen was black again
5. I started again in Recovery (forced shutdown with long press on power)
6. Opened CMD and started Regedit.exe
7. I selected the HKLM in order to activate Load Hive from File menu
8. Loaded the real SYSTEM hive from D:\Windows\System32\Config
9. Renamed the DosDevices so that C: became X: then D: became C: and X: became D (as explained here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/223188/how-to-restore-the-system-boot-drive-letter-in-windows )
10. Unloaded the hive
11. Reboot >> All back to normal :)

Well there is some simpler method to return the Windows partition to C using a Windows Live CD, but unfortunately I do not recall it now. If you search in the forums you might find it. Every time you add a second hard disk in the computer make sure it is connected at a greater SATA connector number (eg SATA 2) than your current hard disk (eg SATA 0). This helps avoid such drive letter issues even if the motherboard battery is dead and BIOS resets to default settings. System will try the first hard disk to boot, that is your current disk on SATA 0, and then any other hard disk on greater SATA number. To make it fool-proof, I would also make sure the current hard disk has top boot priority (first) before any other hard disk, or even before any other boot device. If you don't need the Windows installation on the second hard disk, delete it.

i have a weird variation.

sometimes when cold booting, the monitor doesn't "wake up". there's no internal speaker, so no warning to diagnose. holding the power off/shut down button on the machine to turn it off and then turn on again fixes the issue, sort of, insofar as it posts (says check bios, etc)

desktop. maybe i have hardware issue? XD

the reliability history in win 10 usually tells me a previous shutdown was unexpected. so i kinda don't shut down the machine anymore unless i leave the house for the whole day. no problem with sending it to sleep and waking it back up.