Black screen only showing mouse on boot up

[conspratr]

I have an Acer Aspire V5 which on startup only shows the Acer screen then a black screen with the cursor which I can move around. ctrl shift esc, ctrl alt del, enter, f buttons do nothing. I can access the BIOS and see that the hard drive is there but don't know what else to do with it. Luckily I have a warantee on it but is there anything I can do to fix it, I don't see why it would have a serious problem so soon(after less than a year).

 

[popatim]

Have you tried letting it just sit like that for an hour?
Sometimes it still really installing stuff and hasn't loaded the desktop. This happens at work often.

 

[conspratr]

Have you tried letting it just sit like that for an hour?
Sometimes it still really installing stuff and hasn't loaded the desktop. This happens at work often.

yes still doesnt work.

 

[popatim]

do commands still work such as windowskey +R to bring up the RUN prompt?

 

[conspratr]

I talked to Acer tech support and alt+f10 brought me to a screen to reset the computer to factory default.

 

[bigmanke6]

You can try to turn off the "fast statup" (Control Panel -> Power Options -> Chose what the power buttons do -> Change settings that are currently unavailable -> Turn on fast startup). Sometimes the "fast startup" make some issues, especially when the graphic driver has no official windows 8 support.

 

[popatim]

Since your back to the factory installation, be sure to make your restore & recovery media if you didnt the first time

 

[hayvernlim]

I have an Acer Aspire V5 which on startup only shows the Acer screen then a black screen with the cursor which I can move around. ctrl shift esc, ctrl alt del, enter, f buttons do nothing. I can access the BIOS and see that the hard drive is there but don't know what else to do with it. Luckily I have a warantee on it but is there anything I can do to fix it, I don't see why it would have a serious problem so soon(after less than a year).

I experience the same issue and I managed to fix it but it may not work for everyone. I'm using an Acer Aspire V5-471PG running Windows 8 (not yet upgraded to 8.1) 18months old with touchscreen.

I recall having a Windows Update on a Friday and on the following Monday I experienced the Black Screen with Mouse Cursor (active) but no Windows log on. The Acer splash screen loaded so it isn't a broken screen. I could not access BIOS or SAFE MODE as none of the F-keys or DEL responded. I even tried mashing keys. No amount of random F-keys and weird combinations worked. Even disengaging the batteries to clear 'static' worked (which I did eventhough I was very much sceptical). I even tried plugging my laptop into an external monitor running VGA cable. Didn't work. No amount of minutes that passed whilst holding on the power button or doing finger twister made any difference.

The way that worked (for me) after I arrive at the black screen and pressing the left mouse button for the cursor to appear (and is movable), I then pressed (Windows Button + P). When I did so, the cursor changed to a loading symbol. I had to press it a couple of more times when suddenly the Windows 8 logon screen appeared. There is a flash of the monitor extension tab that appeared (the one that let's you choose if you want to duplicate, extend of have the projector display only) on the right of the screen.

Now that I was in Windows, I could login as usual but found that my Internet connection is disabled. In fact my Wireless Adapter had an error. It was working very fine and well 3 days ago and I did not turn it on over the weekend. I checked my Device Manager and found that the drivers for Intel HD 4000 had an error, Realtek PCIe Card Reader had an error, Artheros Wireless Adapter had an error and some USB universal bus majiggy had an error. I first suspected that it was the Intel HD 4000 that was giving my Windows the case of BSoD so I disabled it (I run a discreet Nvidia GeForce 710m) and proceeded to restart my pc. Lo-and-behold I had the black screen once again and the Windows Button + P didn't seem to work. Infuriated, I gave the PC some time and pressed Windows Button + P repeated (without mashing the any other keys). Windows logon screen pops out and I log into Windows. Lucky.

I checked if there were any Windows update recently. There were a bunch dated 14-Nov-2014 and one today! I hadn't even entered Windows for long and there was an update. I wasn't 100% sure but I had to try. So I uninstalled the latest update (sorry I didn't save the update description. It was a security update). Then I focused on fixing my broken drivers. I uninstalled the existing (broken) driver. I downloaded the available (but not the latest) Artheros network adapter driver (comes with BT driver) from Acer's support website (using other means) and loaded it into my laptop and proceeded to install. It took a while and finally the errors were gone. Now that I am able to connect to the Internet, I resumed to download all other drivers to fix all driver problems that existed.

Once I was done, my pc is working as usual. It restarts and loads the Windows logon without fuss.

I need to stress that there's is SO many reports of black screen + mouse cursor on the web but each were quite different in character. Some could ctrl-alt-del and some could enter task manager and some could go into safe mode. This is not my address as the definite solution but it worked for me and perhaps it could work for you.