Black screen

[jacorbysem]

I recently upgraded from Windows Xp to Windows 7, and whenever I try to log off or change users, the screen will go black and i cant do anything. I can move the mouse around, but that's it. I end up having to shut down and re-boot. I dont know much about computers, so if someone could explain it to me in simple terms that would be great

 

[The_Prophecy]

I would first go check for updated video drivers. Find out the manufacturer and model of your card if you don't already know and go to their site to get the latest drivers. Once the newest drivers are installed, see if the black screen issue still occurs.

 

[jacorbysem]

i checked the drivers and it looks like they're up to date.

 

[The_Prophecy]

Ok. Now lets try disabling some drivers. If the system will boot into Safe Mode (hit F8 during the boot up process and choose Safe Mode from the list that appears), open up the Device Manager and disable the Sound and network drivers. If this doesn't work, uninstall the video driver (make sure you tick the box to delete the driver from the computer when you do this) so the system defaults back to the generic video driver.

 

[jacorbysem]

I tried pressing F8, but nothing happened. It said F2 and F12 up in the top right corner, and i explored inside those but couldnt find safe mode. Is there any other way to do it?

 

[The_Prophecy]

F2 and F12 are likely your BIOS and device boot menu. These won't let you access safe mode. F8 is the only way to get into safe mode without actually booting into Windows in normal mode first. Continue pressing F8 as soon as your computer actually reboots and loads the POST screen.

 

[jacorbysem]

do i disable ALL of the network drivers? and if i do end up uninstalling the video driver, what will that do?

 

[jacorbysem]

do i disable ALL of the network drivers? and if i do end up uninstalling the video driver, what will that do?

where would i find the video driver to uninstall it? Because so far as i can tell, it didn't work...

 

[The_Prophecy]

Video driver is under the Display Adapters section in Device Manager. Removing the video driver will force Windows to revert back to the generic driver.

As far as the network drivers go, yes, disable all of them so they can be ruled out as the cause of the problem.

 

[jacorbysem]

it doesnt seem to have made a difference. The screen still goes black when you log off or switch users. I made sure to click the little box and everything, so...is there anything else i can try?

Im getting kinda frustrated with it..and im thinking about uninstalling it. How would i go about doing that if I downloaded it off the internet and dont have the disk?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Dare I ask where you got this from? Even if you downloaded it (still hesitant to ask where it came from) from the internet, you should have had to burn a disk to install the OS since you came from Windows XP. Microsoft doesn't allow in-place upgrades from Windows XP, so you would have had to burn a disk and booted from it.

 

[jacorbysem]

haha i should have explained earlier...I'm in a computer science class at school, and we're doing an online course. Apparently the website we're learning from gave us all free upgrades to Windows 7.

As for the disk...i didn't burn one. Was I supposed to? I don't remember it telling me I had to...I can download it again, so should I put it on a disk and then will it uninstall?

 

[jacorbysem]

Could the problem possibly be that I installed the wrong version of Windows 7?

 

[digitalvivo]

I would suggest making new user accounts and importing the data over to the new accounts.

When the black screen comes up what happens when you try ctrl+shift+esc?

Does the taskmgr come up? if so try file>new task>explorer.exe

post back please.

 

[jacorbysem]

i tried ctrl+shift+esc, but it didnt work, nothing popped up.

I havent tried new user accounts though.

 

[jacorbysem]

The new user accounts didnt work. As I said before, could it have been that I accidentally installed the wrong version of windows?

 

[digitalvivo]

was this an upgrade or a fresh install. Upgrades have too many issues with moving core files over. There is just to much going on that can get screwed up pretty easy.

Always do a clean install whenever possible. Backing up your system is also a smart idea in case you run into something like this.