Question Black screen with cursor on boot after attempting EFI partition migration ?

[changememax]

I have three disks:

• C, an SSD where my Windows installation lives.
• D, a large slower HD which I use for storage.
• E, a fancy new M2 with 1TB space

Both C and D have been in the machine since I got it almost a decade ago.

However, I have an ASUS Z97K motherboard, which was one of the very first mobos on the market to support M.2

So I had some issues getting the M.2 drive to work as a result, such as needing to leave 2 of my SATA ports open before the drive would function. Even then, I couldn't get Windows to recognize the new M.2 drive.

Eventually, since I'd had this Windows installation for almost a decade and it was very janky, I decided to reinstall and just have Windows itself on the M.2 (E:\) drive.

I made a 150GB partition on the E drive for Windows to live in. However, I got errors during the installation process and eventually had to bail out, reinstalling Windows to the C drive again. Research at the time seemed to indicate that my motherboard simply didn't have mature enough support for M.2 to boot off of one.

Unfortunately, this resulted in my EFI partition stuck in the middle of the M.2 drive, with 150GB of space rendered unusable. I tried just creating a new partition but would always get the "minimum space is less than the extent" error from Windows Disk Manager.

Yesterday I finally decided to try and fix the issue.

At first I shrank C by 300MB and tried to add the EFI partition using diskpart, but my C disk is not GPT, so the operation failed.

So instead I shrank D by 300MB and put the EFI partition there, assigning it the letter Y and installing the EFI with:

bcdboot C:\Windows /f UEFI /s Y:

However, I now get a black screen with cursor on boot. I can get into safe mode by shutting down & rebooting three times, but I'm not sure what to do in there.

I'm not really a Windows or hardware/firmware expert, so to be honest, I don't fully understand what GPT is and why my boot SSD couldn't host its own EFI partition. But now I have two and cannot boot normally. I would love to resolve this without having to reinstall again if I can. Any help is much appreciated!

 

[Aeacus]

E, a fancy new M2 with 1TB space

Make and model of that drive is?

 

[changememax]

Make and model of that drive is?

Solidigm 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe (Newegg)

 

[changememax]

Update: I'm able to get back into my Windows 10 installation, but it almost seems like my motherboard is now choosing one of the EFI partitions randomly every time I restart. Sometimes I get the black screen with cursor, sometimes I get a proper login screen.

It's starting to look like my only option is to backup everything on the NVMe drive and reformat it from scratch to get rid of the dangling EFI partition. Which sucks, because there's a lot of stuff on there. Though I'm a little worried that my boot could be completely broken by doing so. When I tried deleting the old EFI partition using diskpart, I got the message "The operation is not supported by the object." I tried using a shady third party tool called EaseUS Partition Manager, and it had the option to delete the NEW EFI partition on the D: drive, but not the old one on the E: drive, so no dice there.

 

[Aeacus]

Solidigm 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe (Newegg)

Even then, I couldn't get Windows to recognize the new M.2 drive.

As far as i can tell, your MoBo doesn't support M.2 NVMe SSD, let alone Gen4 drive. Only M.2 ACHI (SATA) SSD.

While MoBo manual doesn't specify what M.2 SSD it supports, the Device Report does,
link: https://www.asus.com/supportonly/z97k/helpdesk_qvl/
(Select memory/device support tab and download the Device Report file.)

In Device Report, only M.2 SSDs listed, are all ACHI (SATA) SSDs. Sure, it also lists PCI-E SSDs, but those slot into PCI-E slot, and not into M.2 slot.
In a slim chance your M.2 slot supports NVMe, it would only be PCI-E 2.0 x2. While the Solidigm drive you bought, is PCI-E 4.0 x4 drive.

So, i suggest that you stop your efforts in getting the M.2 NVMe SSD working, since it most likely won't work (there is no word that your MoBo supports M.2 NVMe drive). Instead, when you want to have M.2 drive, get ACHI (SATA) SSD instead,
pcpp: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#f=122080&c1=di_m2.sata&sort=price
(or any of the 6 listed in the Device Report)

Another ballpark of issues is; IF the M.2 ACHI SSD can be bootable or not. Early M.2 slots on Z97 chipset MoBos can be either way. Either they do support bootable OS or not, whereby M.2 drive is only for additional storage. Sadly, your MoBo manual doesn't say which of the two it is. Here, i'm inclined towards that it does not support bootable OS drive in M.2 slot.
(I also have Z97 chipset MoBo in my Haswell build: MSI Z97 Gaming 5, where manual clearly states that M.2 SSD can be NVMe. Due to that, i have M.2 NVMe Samsung 980 1TB in it, as OS drive and it works fine.)

 

[SkyNetRising]

Update: I'm able to get back into my Windows 10 installation, but it almost seems like my motherboard is now choosing one of the EFI partitions randomly every time I restart. Sometimes I get the black screen with cursor, sometimes I get a proper login screen.

Please show screenshot from Disk Management.
Also show screenshot from CPU-Z - motherboard section.
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

Having multiple EFI partitions can cause issues. You'd have to delete one of them, so only one remains.

BTW - NVME support requires BIOS level 2603 or later.

 

[changememax]

Thanks so much for all that detail @Aeacus. Despite all of that, through whatever fortunate twist of fate, the NVMe drive has been working just fine for the last few months, except for the partition and boot problems. Perhaps it's just running at 2.0 instead of 4.0 since that's what my mobo supports. Your diligence is appreciated! I will certainly not be attempting anything fancy with this drive anymore, at least not in this machine. Based on your research I'm grateful it ended up working at all.

@SkyNetRising Here's my Disk Management screenshot:

And CPU-Z mainboard tab:

 

[Aeacus]

I don't fully understand what GPT is

Further reading: https://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive/

Windows can only boot from GPT on UEFI-based computers running 64-bit versions of Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista, and corresponding server versions. All versions of Windows — 11, 10, 8, 7, and Vista — can read GPT drives and use them for data — they just can't boot from them without UEFI.

In a nutshell, GPT is better partition style than old MBR is. Though, GPT requires UEFI, which you may need to enable from BIOS, if UEFI support is disabled.

From holy bible of PCs (your MoBo manual), page 2-46;
2.8.9 CSM (Compatibility Support Module)
Launch CSM - should be in "Enabled" state
Boot Devices Control - should be in "UEFI and Legacy OPROM" state. If it is in "Legacy OPROM only" state, then booting from GPT partition won't work.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Here's my Disk Management screenshot:

Execute following from elevated command prompt, to remove EFI system partition from 1TB drive.
Note - it will not allow deleting it, if you have booted from 1TB drive.

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 2​

(select 1TB drive)​

list partition​

select partition 4​

(select 100MB EFI system partition)​

delete partition override​

And CPU-Z mainboard tab:

Current BIOS version of your board is 2401.
NVME support was added with BIOS version 2603.

I'd recommend updating BIOS to latest version. Latest version is 2902.

Z97-K - Support

www.asus.com

 

[changememax]

Running delete partition override on disk 2 partition 4 gives me this message:

Virtual Disk Service error:

The operation is not supported by the object.

The specified command or parameters are not supported on this system.

I assume this is because I've been booting from that partition all this time.

But unfortunately, this is still a critical problem. I can't stop Windows from rebooting almost nightly for updates, and every time I shut down, it takes anywhere from 5 to 15 reboots to get back into Windows.

Is my only option at this point to backup the data on the 1TB drive and completely reformat it?

 

[changememax]

Oh no. This is actually getting worse. I decided to just bail out and reinstall Windows again, since I was unable to get back to the login screen even after 20+ reboots with various different BIOS boot settings. However, when I select "Reset this PC" from the boot recovery menu, it demands a password. I never set a password for this local account. I use a PIN for login. I tried every password I could imagine as well as my PIN, and tried leaving it blank, but it rejects everything.

At this point I might have to boot into a recovery OS from a USB stick. Maybe that at least will allow me to delete the dangling partition and try booting again.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Update BIOS to latest version.

 

[changememax]

Ok, I successfully updated my BIOS to 2902. I'm seemingly able to login to Windows every time now, which is great. Unfortunately, every single one of my extra monitors is now invisible to Windows. They're plugged in through my GPU, an NVIDIA GTX970, so it probably has something to do with that. I don't see any options pertaining to the GPU in my BIOS, so hopefully I can install an NVIDIA update or something and finally be back up and running. Thanks so much for all the help so far!

 

[changememax]

HUZZAH! It was a BIOS option after all:

Advanced\System Agent Configuration\Graphics Configuration\CPU Graphics Multi-Monitor

After enabling this, I get my monitors back.

In summary, with the updated BIOS, both EFI partitions are listed in the boot priority list as "Windows Boot Manager", so I was able to drag the old one to the bottom. Now at least I have a stable boot situation until I have the time to backup my 1TB NVMe drive and format it from scratch to reclaim that failed boot partition.

Question answered. Thanks again everyone, you have my undying gratitude!! I'm out of boot limbo!! 🎉

 

[changememax]

Welp. I started getting the black screen with cursor again, so I bit the bullet and booted into an Ubuntu live CD so I could delete the EFI partition on the 1TB drive and reformat it. The reformat went fine, the data is whole and uncorrupted, and the old EFI partition is gone, but I'm still getting the black screen with cursor and it seems I'm completely unable to get into Windows no matter how many times I reboot. I'm a little at a loss here and would once again appreciate any suggestions. Otherwise it looks like I'm reinstalling Windows again...

 

[Aeacus]

but I'm still getting the black screen with cursor and it seems I'm completely unable to get into Windows no matter how many times I reboot.

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode?
Here are some options,
link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234
3rd option should work for you, however, it's quite radical.

Hardware wise, i'd try with iGPU, IF your CPU has that (should have). This means that you remove your GTX 970 completely from the system and hook monitor to MoBo.

 

[SkyNetRising]

booted into an Ubuntu live CD so I could delete the EFI partition on the 1TB drive and reformat it.
The reformat went fine, the data is whole and uncorrupted,
the old EFI partition is gone, but I'm still getting the black screen with cursor

So you deleted EFI partition?
What did you format?
How exactly any data can remain after formatting it?

Boot from windows installation media into command prompt,
execute following and show command output:

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 0​

list partition​

select disk 1​

list partition​

select disk 2​

list partition​

list volume​

 

[changememax]

These problems keep getting weirder and weirder.

I think I have two discrete problems now: The black screen with cursor, and the Windows-unreadable M2 drive.

Black Screen with Cursor Before Login​

I saw @Aeacus' suggestion to remove the graphics card, did some more research, and decided to try some more BIOS tweaks before removing the card entirely. I was confused that the graphics card is involved at all, as I have not installed any driver updates nor changed my display configuration since these issues began.

Eventually, I disabled GPU/motherboard multi-monitor integration in BIOS, reducing my displays to only the one that's plugged directly into the motherboard. Suddenly I was able to see the login screen every time. The black screen with cursor issue was completely resolved.

Now that I could get into Windows again, I noticed that NVIDIA's GeForce Experience had some updates for my venerable GTX 970, so I installed them immediately and re-enabled multi-monitor integration. Unfortunately the black screen issue was back immediately.

At this point I did some more querying and stumbled on this thread on Microsoft's help forum, where the user with a similar issue said that they logged in blindly on this screen.

Figuring I must be going insane, I pressed Enter, typed my PIN, and pressed Enter again.

Pow. Windows was fine all along. I was able to login immediately, but my desktop backgrounds are not displaying.

So now I'm more confused than ever. Why did this problem start at the same time I futzed with my EFI partitions? Why is Windows 10 suddenly unable to render the login screen or desktop backgrounds when graphics card display integration is enabled? I'm able to login and use Windows now, which is great, but with these rendering issues, I'm wondering what else will turn out to be broken in this situation?

Windows-Unreadable M2 NVMe Drive​

Now for my original issue, the bleeding-edge drive with poor support on my crusty old motherboard. At this point I'd love nothing more than to just rip it out and stop dealing with it, but I'm broke and I really need the space and speed of this drive to continue with my current work and projects.

To recap, this all started when I wanted to reclaim my abandoned 150GB boot partition on the M2 drive. I ran `bcdboot` on a new EFI partition and that's when the black screen issue started.

Thinking that the problem was having two EFI partitions, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone. I booted into an Ubuntu live disk, deleted the EFI partition and the abandoned boot partition, moved the existing partition to the left, and extended it so that it spanned the entire drive, making one simple uninterrupted partition. It took about 30 minutes for GParted to complete these operations.

To be clear, there is nothing physically wrong with the drive or its data. In Ubuntu live drive only, I'm able to mount the drive, read and write data, watch movies from the media directories, and so on. In Windows, however, the drive is now marked as Invalid. I'm able to Online it with DiskPart, but that doesn't seem to change much.

As @SkyNetRising suggested, here is the output of my DiskPart diagnostics.

• Disk 0 ("SMOUGH") is an HDD where my EFI partition now lives
• Disk 1 ("ORNSTEIN") is an SSD which is where Windows actually lives
• And Disk 2 ("ATLAS") is the M2 drive

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          465 GB   301 MB        *
  Disk 1    Online          223 GB  1024 KB
  Disk 2    Invalid         953 GB      0 B   *    *

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Reserved           128 MB    17 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            465 GB   129 MB
  Partition 3    System             200 MB   465 GB

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary             50 MB  1024 KB
  Partition 2    Primary            223 GB    51 MB

DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Dynamic Data       953 GB  1024 KB

DISKPART> detail disk

SOLIDIGM SSDPFKNU010TZ
Disk ID: {63324D1C-6DAE-4F9C-8394-FF50CDC1EBD8}
Type   : NVMe
Status : Invalid
Path   : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1C00)#PCI(0000)#NVME(P00T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : No
Pagefile Disk  : No
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : No
Clustered Disk  : No

There are no volumes.

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     F                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 1     D   SMOUGH       NTFS   Partition    465 GB  Healthy
  Volume 2         SYSTEM       FAT32  Partition    200 MB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 3     G   System Rese  NTFS   Partition     50 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 4     C   ORNSTEIN     NTFS   Partition    223 GB  Healthy    Boot

Well, I'm really at a loss here. It still seems like reinstalling Windows may be my best shot at cleaning up this mess, so at the moment, I'm just proceeding to backup as much data as I can so it's less painful if/when I do reinstall again. But, gosh, it would be so great if I could get unstuck without having to move all that data around and re-do all my settings and installations and config for the second time this year.

Everything I'm trying to do was working fine until I tried to reclaim those 150GB. If I knew it was going to be this much of a fiasco, I would have just left it alone, or created a separate partition and just dealt with it being non-contiguous. In retrospect, my foolhardiness has consigned me to computing limbo once again, and I am full of woe.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Your new drive is in invalid state.
So you can get into windows now.
Can you show current state from Disk Management?

Why do you need iGPU enabled?
Do you have any monitors connected to video outputs on motherboard?
Disable it, if you don't use it.
You'll have more system ram available. Portion of it will not be locked out for exclusive iGPU use.

 

[Aeacus]

So now I'm more confused than ever. Why did this problem start at the same time I futzed with my EFI partitions? Why is Windows 10 suddenly unable to render the login screen or desktop backgrounds when graphics card display integration is enabled? I'm able to login and use Windows now, which is great, but with these rendering issues, I'm wondering what else will turn out to be broken in this situation?

Since your GTX 970 is old GPU, i had a suspicion that the black screen could be GPU issue, hence why i suggested using iGPU.

Now, it still could be GTX 970 issue, as of why you can't see Win log-in screen + no Win desktop background. This much is established that when you use different GPU (in this case, iGPU inside your CPU), you don't have these log-in screen issues. Still, it's weird that GTX 970 works partly, but not on log-in screen and can't render background image as well.

Oh, GPUs (all hardware actually) can die at any given moment. And the older it is - the higher the chance.

In terms of hardware, it is possible that your GTX 970 has developed a fault (most likely some driver conflict on hardware level, that can't be resolved by software fixes).

Did you try to boot into Safe Mode when GTX 970 was in the system? Since if successful, it would stop 3rd party programs running, including GPU (Nvidia) drivers, leaving only Win Kernel and Win display drivers. This would narrow down the issues regarding black screen.

As of moving forwards regarding GPU;
Continuing to use iGPU would be good, since it's established that iGPU works fine. But i don't know if you need dedicated GPU on daily basis or not. Since if not, you could just use your iGPU for time being.
But if dedicated GPU is needed, then i'd look towards new GPU. It doesn't have to be RTX 30- or 40- series. It can also be GTX 16-series, like GTX 1660 Ti that i'm using.

At this point I'd love nothing more than to just rip it out and stop dealing with it, but I'm broke and I really need the space and speed of this drive to continue with my current work and projects.

I don't have much knowledge dealing with partition (software) issues. I'm specialized on hardware issues. SkyNetRising should be able to sort the partition issue out for you.

 

[changememax]

Before I get into more diagnostics, I've solved one tiny aspect of this mystery: My Windows 10 desktop backgrounds no longer display because they were images stored on the M2 NVMe drive, which Windows can no longer read. Phew. At least that part was something stupid and simple. I changed the background to a solid color just in case. I also went back into BIOS and toggled my primary display settings from Auto to Integrated and then back to Auto again. So far I've had two reboots in a row where the login screen displayed successfully, so it's possible that the black screen with cursor issue was due to the unreadable desktop background, or the primary display settings in the BIOS, but this issue has come back again and again, so I'm not inclined to call it solved just yet.

Here's my Disk Management readout:

And view of the same three drives from GParted on the Ubuntu live disk:

As for the displays, I use 4:

• Three on the motherboard's Intel iGPU
  • A Dell connected by DVI
  • An Acer connected by VGA
  • A Wacom Cintiq connected by HDMI
• One on the NVIDIA GTX 970 GPU
  • A Lenovo connected by DVI

I require all of these displays, and may even add a fifth soon. I'm using all of the available display ports on my motherboard now, but the GTX 970 still has two free HDMI ports and a free DVI port. According to the graphics driver configuration software, there is nothing amiss:

NVIDIA's application sees the Lenovo.

Intel sees the Dell, the Acer (AL1917W), and the Cintiq.

And Windows sees all four.

@Aeacus, I did try safe mode, but strangely enough, even in Safe Mode it chooses the Lenovo as the primary display, which is the only one plugged into the graphics card.

You may be on to something with the graphics card itself going bad. It's part of the original hardware for this machine, and is one of the few components I have not already swapped out over the years. So I'll at least start researching some options for a potential replacement. Hopefully the Bitcoin graphics card crunch has slowed down; I haven't bought a graphics card in 8 years, and I'm kind of dreading it! I've really gotten used to the GTX 970.

 

[Aeacus]

I haven't bought a graphics card in 8 years, and I'm kind of dreading it! I've really gotten used to the GTX 970.

You can bring yourself up to speed with this nice article,
link: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gpus,4380.html

And this to learn about the GPU hierarchy,
link: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html
Which also includes your GTX 970 and my GTX 1660 Ti, for a nice overview in terms of performance.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I booted into an Ubuntu live disk, deleted the EFI partition and the abandoned boot partition, moved the existing partition to the left, and extended it so that it spanned the entire drive, making one simple uninterrupted partition. It took about 30 minutes for GParted to complete these operations.

Your manipulations with gparted have messed up dynamic disk.

If in linux you can access the data then backup it to another drive.
Then:
Delete partition from 1TB drive.
Convert drive from dynamic to basic.
Restore data from backup.

It still seems like reinstalling Windows may be my best shot at cleaning up this mess,

And no. Reinstalling windows will not fix your messed up drive.

 

[SkyNetRising]

You could try Minitool Partition Wizard free to convert dynamic disk to basic.
But making data backup is still recommended.
You'll need it, if something goes wrong with conversion.