Classic Start Installation Disaster

Using Total Uninstall, I removed Classic Shell, and then started installing Classic Start. The install seemed rather odd, with constant flashing of the desktop, for example. When it finished, it said that I needed to restart the computer, which I did, and is when I encountered what I would deem to have been a disaster.

Windows restarted as usual, asked me for my password, much too quickly went past the usual wait for the desktop to appear, and I was greeted with a black screen and a mouse cursor. I waited a while, whereupon Total Uninstall reappeared at the normal last step, which ran, so I closed it.

That reverted to the black screen + cursor, and that is all I got, other than a few momentary busy cursor symbols. I rebooted a few times got nothing. I tried to run my Macrium Reflect repair disc, which did not work, The DVD drive was running, but I was taken to the normal Windows login screen. It is entirely possible that I improperly reset the BIOS to boot from the DVD drive, although I chose a BIOS entry for it.

Failing to figure out what the problem was, much less how to fix it, I created a Windows 10 ISO on a USB key on my wife's computer, reset the BIOS on mine to boot from it, which it kindly did, and offered me several choices, to I found the Restore Point entry, chose one created yesterday, skipping the one created when I used Total Uninstall to install Classic Start. That worked--it even found my Classic Shell .XML file on the desktop, where I had saved it earlier today.

Quicken did not seem overly happy to completely load, but did so finally; Word Perfect started and offered to show me a file which I had deleted earlier, and so forth, so things seem to have been well restored by the Restore Point action.

I admit that I did not restart after removing Class Shell and installing Classic Start. I don't want to go through another episode, and wonder if perhaps that oversight may have caused the weird problem encountered after installing Class Start, and also wonder about the odd behavior of that install: During the process, a pop-up said that two programs needed to be closed and would restart. One was QDir, I think that the other might have been the Windows file manager. At any rate, I chose to let the installer close them, and I am not at all certain that that worked properly.

Now that I have just about used up all the individual letters stored in my computer for posting messages, any thoughts/suggestions/incantations to be observed before I try to remove and install again?

f14 AlleyCat (oops, Tomcat), thanks for the quick reply. I did see references to the program in the lengthy Classic Shell thread, but no link to it. File has been downloaded.

When I get around tuit (I only have square ones,) I shall report the download to MalwareBytes: Their beta-test extension for Firefox thinks that the location has a bad reputation.

Bree said:

That black screen may be seen after some cumulative updates, sometimes with a little message top left saying 'updating desktop settings' or similar. Worrying as it looks, it appears to be normal when an update has modified the desktop behaviour.

I have seen that under the same circumstances, but as far as I can recall, I had only used Restore Point once before yesterday and don't know if the `black screen syndrome' was seem that time. Having spent too much time starting at a black screen yesterday, in the vain hope that the problem would resolve itself, when I saw yet another black screen, I just left the room, so I don't know if the updating message appeared before the desktop reappeared.

f14tomcat said:

This may have no bearing, but occasionally, when doing an Insider Build update, I get a similar black screen. The desktop icons are there, taskbar is there and full, but the background is pitch black. After a few seconds (5-10) it all fades in and is ok. It's happened enough, and consistently like that, I attribute it to the graphics driver and Windows rebuilding the display buffer. Probably not using all the correct terms. But it seems that way. Then it settles down and doesn't recur. Maybe a connection with the driver, maybe not.

I would have been much calmer had I seen what you have seen, in place of the entirely black screen with a white cursor. Seeing this after removing the first failed install of the new software, which forced me to create an ISO so that I could then access Restore Point, whereupon, after rebooting, I again encountered the totally black screen. At least that second black screen was replaced by the desktop after a short while, a `short while' which, under the circumstances, seemed interminable.