Black Screen with Cursor at startup

2nd time poster, 1st time...."new threader".

I kind of jumped into another black screen thread with this and it was suggested (rightly) that I start a new one. I'll just copy/paste what I posted there. I'm kind of a computer semi-literate, so forgive any dumb questions I might have--

"I'm having this startup, black screen with cursor nightmare too--hangs on Black screen at startup for an hour before it goes to the sign on screen. Been Googling and watching youtube "fix" vids like a maniac for 3 days now (a lot of Windows 10 hatred out there).

On one of the vids, the "tech guy" who did the vid wrote that if you can see ANYTHING (his emphasis) on your screen when it hangs, it's not a hard drive problem. Is this true?? I don't want to bring it into Best Buy (if I can't resolve this) and pay 150 bucks for a diagnostic just to be told my hard drive's fried and I need a new computer.

When my computer's running, it works fine. I've been leaving it on 24/7 and using Sleep Mode when I'm not using it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks."

I'll just add that Caledon Ken gave this advice for a fix--

"Yours is likely a Fast Start Up issue,
To a command prompt(admin) type
powercfg -h off
This shuts off hibernation and disables Windows Fast Start Up."

Sounds good to me. I might ask to be walked through that a little more though (lol). It's that semi-literate thing.

Hard for me to believe this is a hard drive problem. It runs too well. I could be wrong, of course.

Bastet said:

Do you have an nVidia graphics card &/or wireless mouse/keyboard?
I had a similar problem with black screen, in my case it turned out to be nVidia update. I could open & see task manager but nothing else, while there I closed anything which mentioned nVidia & screen burst into life. I uninstalled the graphics driver & reinstalled.

No, just the Intel processor that came with the laptop.

It got worse today. Microsoft did another big update for Windows 10 late last night, and it forced a restart. This time it hung on black screen with no cursor, just that circle/loading thingy spinning for over an hour before it went to the sign on screen. The updates loaded "successfully" this time. Unfortunately, now I can't read anything on my Desktop (lol). I can see all of the Desktop icons but can't read them, e.g.-I can open Device Manager and see all the icons there, but don't know which icon is for what (Graphics, Sound, etc.). Can't read System Restore, Reset, etc or see where to click to run them. But Microsoft did congratulate me on getting all their great improvements! That was nice of them.

Thing is that I can run all the softwear I have installed and use the Internet with Edge as you can see (although Google Chrome is unreadable). My desktops trashed though.

Now I'm thinking that it is my hard drive or my graphics driver, but I swear there wasn't any problem before the 1st massive update they did a couple of weeks ago. I might have to spring for a new laptop now, but I'll never use Windows 10 again if I can avoid it and I'm not alone. I'll get one with 7 installed if I can. Many others did.

Thanks, Bastet. I'd still welcome any suggestions. Say "Hey" to your cats! One of my neighbors walks hers every morning.

Bastet said:

So you're seeing icons but not text, is that correct?
If so do you have Comodo firewall software? There is a thread on this forum about it. No text displayed in explorer after Creators Update
Comodo have released a hot fix. https://antivirus.comodo.com/windows...e-advisory.php
Others have said uninstalling McAfee has fixed the problem, while others say updating their graphics card has solved things.

That's exactly correct--Icons but no text, and when I try to run Windows programs, like Troubleshoot, System Restore, etc., there's no text and I can't see what to click.

I have nothing but Windows Defender, but I'm going to check out the links you posted anyway. Maybe it's a Defender problem. The updates had a lot to do with Defender and the firewall stuff. It's also strange that when I try to open Defender through Settings, the window hangs for a few seconds then closes. I can't get at it. Frustrating as hell.

I appreciate the help, Bastet.

Bastet said:

It may be Windows firewall.
I'll see if I can find any further information.

Really appreciate it.

Right now I'm looking at ways to disable Defender through a command prompt, since they say System Restore doesn't work unless it's turned off. The last two I tried with Defender on failed.

Thanks, Bastet.