[SOLVED] Blank desktop screen whenever I restart Windows ?

Jan 16, 2021
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I am having an issue that whenever I restart my machine, the bios takes a little bit longer to get to the login screen, then when I login, I just get a blank desktop. No icons or taskbar. Then, I'll either have to run sihost.exe manually or end the already running process. This doesn't happen after I boot the computer from being off completely, only on restart. Does anyone have any ideas? I've done the SFC scan and DISM but I don't know where to go from here. Thanks.

Update: I have a crash dump file but I don't know how to make any sense of it ?
 
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Solution
its odd it happened on 2 different installs. normally if you get same behaviour on 2 different installs its a hardware cause. Since it didn't start until you updated windows, it might have also updated a driver at same time. Can you look in update history and see if any drivers mentioned?

Did you use a new installer?

have you updated motherboard drivers from website?

can you try to restart without speakers and Mouse attached? I don't think you can start windows without a keyboard. Just testing

What are specs of the PC?

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
Update: I have a crash dump file but I don't know how to make any sense of it.
crash dump? did you get a BSOD? What is name of the file?

the difference between a restart and just starting up is based on Fast startup. Win 10 by default isn't off when you shut it down, its asleep. Or more accurately its in a hibernate state. So the only time the PC is actually off is a restart.

the bios takes longer on a restart as you actually turn PC off in the process. It restarts PC. It also has to reload all the drivers.

Fast start-up - what it does is at shutdown, the PC puts a copy of running drivers into ram or the hiberfil.sys file and puts PC to sleep. When you start PC, its already half loaded and doesn't need to load as much. This speeds up boot times on PC with hdd. No so helpful on SSD based PC.

So its unusual to find a PC that is fine with fast start-up but doesn't like restarts. It is normally the other way around. Old drivers don't like fast start-up. This looks like a piece of hardware not responding to windows and causing desktop to time out. I wonder if it would appear eventually if you wait.

I have had a pair of dying speakers do this to me before. took a while to work out cause, I even clean installed windows trying to figure it out. It was only obvious as I had moved pc to another room to do reinstall, it worked fine until i reattached speakers and it did the same thing again. I was sad as speakers meant a lot to me.

What are the parts in the PC?

What is attached to the PC- - I mean, speakers, USB devices, printers.

what is oldest part of PC?
 
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Raz_5_

Honorable
Mar 5, 2017
128
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10,595
It sounds like something might have happened to the registry. I'd do a clean install of Windows but dont take my advice yet. See if any of these guys can help you. I would just consider it a possiblity, but then again I could just be talking nonsense.

I had my own personal experience with a strange startup differences between, shutting down, resetting and even as odd as waking up from sleep mode. They all reacted differently with my system to a point where I'd have to launch my desktop with commands via safe mode and I remember it having something to do with regedit. If you dont already know ,just in case DO NOT TAMPER IN THAT. Again, I'm not telling you to look up or even rely on my suggestion. I am just talking what I know from my personal experience.
 
Jan 16, 2021
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Everything in the computer are new parts except a pair of HDDs, neither of which are the boot drive. The boot drive is an m.2 drive. I have a USB keyboard and mouse hooked up and the speakers are not USB, but also are plugged into the output of the monitor so sound is actually going through HDMI. I did a clean install of windows last night and it booted up fine, until I ran windows update and updated everything, now explorer doesn't randomly crash but I get the flashing taskbar and blank desktop issue that I've seen before. Only thing that gets passed this is opening the task manager and forcing wsappx to end. I've seen threads about this all over the place but no one has ever found a solution.
 
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Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
its odd it happened on 2 different installs. normally if you get same behaviour on 2 different installs its a hardware cause. Since it didn't start until you updated windows, it might have also updated a driver at same time. Can you look in update history and see if any drivers mentioned?

Did you use a new installer?

have you updated motherboard drivers from website?

can you try to restart without speakers and Mouse attached? I don't think you can start windows without a keyboard. Just testing

What are specs of the PC?
 
Solution