Hello everyone, i am sure each issue is different from the other. And i realize some of these posts are old.
However let me explain my experience which i actually knew what happened and why it happened to ME. I experienced the same thing which led me to googling what happened and led me here.
I recently upgraded from windows 8.1 to windows 10. No biggie. I just bought my laptop 3 days ago, and have been installing games and programs like crazy. But what pushed it over the edge, is lack of knowing what programs drivers will not play nicely together. In my case, it ended up being that the Virus/Firewall program (which i have on a different computer just fine) Was giving me some sort of driver issue, which caused a black startup screen with just a mouse cursor, after about 20 minutes of black screen an error popped up. I had to roll back to a save point i had made previously, by booting up in F8 Mode before windows booted to the black screen. Now i know that BitDefender just doesn't work right with my setup with the current drivers / version of BitDefender.
The end result is, if you have downloaded a program recently, especially some sort of firewall or virus scanning program, it could be conflicting with your setup, which caused this. I never post anything on any site really, but I hope this helps someone.
Ultimately, Boot into safe mode, and uninstall the program that broke your setup, OR a recovery CD, USB, Reinstallation of Windows. In my case, i didn't care to trial and error , and my simplest solution was a roll back to a restore point. Don't worry your laptop won't blow up, you will just lose some time playing with technology.