Windows 10 commonly boots to a black screen with no cursor?

I've received a black screen from time to time, and it usually lasts no more than 15 seconds. But those 15 seconds can seem like a really long time.

Many people recommend a clean install to start 'from scratch'. If you're interested, give it a go. Since your OS was already activated, it will automatically activate again with the clean install. Just follow the tutorial on how: Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums

I created an installation CD for Windows 10, dumb question but, will that still work in this case? The tutorial asks for a bootable USB, and I have such a bad history with those. Plus, I'm dry on spare flash drives.

Go to the tutorial within the tutorial I posted (or just click here) and follow it up to the point where you choose what media to use. Choose ISO. Afterwards, you may have to find the ISO image file and manually 'burn' it to your DVD yourself, because it sounds like the media creation tool will not do it for you. At least it creates it for you, though. Let me know if you encounter any further problems.

EDIT: oh, if you already did it, yes it will work. Just boot to DVD by pressing F8 (usually) when the computer is booting up, repeatedly.

When I boot from the disc and it asks about how to install and where, would I format the partition or just say to do a custom install? If I remember from IT 1, that's practically doing the same thing... Now that I think about it, I should clean install 7 too... Aero problems...

If you have 7 installed on a separate drive, then no problem, disconnect the drive. If it is on the same drive, I'm not sure if the install will cause it problems or not, you might want to look up how to install for dual-boot. I personally find it pointless since 10 pretty much seems like the polished version of 7.

Normally, you would just delete the drive, and have Windows 10 install over it. No need for partitions. You could create those later if you need to.

Here we go, perfect: Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 - Windows 10 Forums

I'm going to go ahead and remove the 10 partition and reinstall it on a new partition. (7 is still my primary OS and 10 is here just because I could say I had it, and because I might make it primary later and ditch 7. Plus if one fails, I have another already installed.) They're both on the same hard drive.

It may be better to just backup one OS or create an image of it on another device, than to have two OSes for the purpose of having one if the other fails. If the drive itself fails, all operating systems fail also. If something doesn't work in one OS, it is usually fairly simple to repair. System restore, for example. Having only one allows you to have more storage space freed up as well. You might consider looking into creating an image in case of future failures if you like; there are many free programs online that will do this, such as macrium reflect.

The main reasons to have 2 OSes is due to program compatibility, or testing. But you are the captain of your own ship, and if you like having both, it works for me too. :)

Do let me know how it goes. If you erase the wrong partition, Windows 7 will not be able to start. I am holding my breath haha. I haven't done it myself, just seen examples from others. I Never had a need to dual-boot, since they have virtual machine technology.

Well, it installed smoothly and booted to the desktop, but after restarting, the Windows 8+ version of the OS select (with mouse support) will lock up and not respond to keyboard or mouse input, and after five timeout seconds, the screen goes black and nothing else happens. A hard reset is needed. Afterward, startup repair still says it's incompatible, CHKDSK did some repairs to the file system apparently, and after that 10 won't do anything but try to do a repair that doesn't succeed. Once I actually made it to the logon screen, but it had frozen. Perfect... Only the old keyboard-only boot manager works and the only way I can even remotely get 10 to start is to enable low res video. However, I haven't installed a single driver or program. It's still as it came. However, I realized one fault of mine. I didn't remove my external hard drive before installing. (not that I installed it on it but still I forgot to)