[SOLVED] Black screen with cursor only when startup

[PeyoteFTW]

Just turn on my laptop today and i got black screen with cursor only, no login screen appear for about couple of minutes, i notice the HDD indicator on but still black screen, i can move my cursor but cant press ctrl alt del. So i force shutdown by hold power button and my laptop shutting down. Then i turn on again everything back to normal. Yes everything is fine but my brain cant stop thinking, about those black screen, is it fine ? do i need to worry about it ?

 

[Colif]

What happened was your PC started up and for some random reason, it swapped the boot method it uses to find the boot drive, and it just stopped at that cursor as it couldn't find one. Your restart made it swap back to normal and continue to boot.

Now you could check health of drive and make sure it wasn't the reason it happened - download HD Sentinel Trial and on the disk tab, run any tests you can - https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_trial.php

You can also try running start up repair, but I don't think this is a windows thing, more PC couldn't find hdd thing

another choice is look in bios boot tab and see if there is an option to auto swap between UEFI and Legacy/CSM boot method.

How old is laptop? What make/model?

Desktop motherboards have CMOS batteries on them that save these settings. In some cases, the battery dies and you need to replace them. I am not sure about laptops