Question Question/Problem: "Black Screen of Death" now drive and saving/opening/loading problems

[gslonesoldier84]

Hi all,

Thank you to everyone who has helped me in the past on this forum! This is a great place to ask questions.

I am really stuck again. I have no idea what is wrong.

1. I started my desktop PC. I got what I read is a "black screen of death" with the mouse pointer visible and moving but the screen black. This kept happening for 4 or 5 launches.
2. I tried to start from what I thought was a boot disc USB drive. I went to BIOS and couldn't find it. I started PC and it made it through to the desktop finally with all visible except my desktop (which is loaded from OneDrive) wasn't there and all my taskbar icons were missing (has happened before when OneDrive isn't loaded or the drive is disconnected with the files on it for the OneDrive.
3. I can't seem to write to any drives (don't know for sure it's weird I can make a new file but it doesn't open (eg I right clicked and made a new RTF file and tried to open it then it doesnt open saying "word cannot open the existing file but it lists the file as C:\users\gurp\appdata\...\normal.dotm"; second eg. made an excel file the same way and tried to open it and it says "excel cannot access the file"E:\..." there are several possible reasons >file name or path doesnt exist >being used by another progran >workbook trying to save has same name as open workbook"..does this every time)
4. My D: drive is automatically changed to my F: drive (the letter was changed from D to F with all else the same)
5. I can't get my desktop and taskbar icons back on

I don't know what else right now I will see what else is not working and try to fix it and add more information.

Thing is, I am afraid to restart the PC if it gets the black screen again. I can at least make a boot disc or something right now (need to find or get a USB). I don't have any restore points to revert back to right now but it's at least somehow an option.

Thank you for reading!

 

[Colif]

I started my desktop PC. I got what I read is a "black screen of death" with the mouse pointer visible and moving but the screen black. This kept happening for 4 or 5 launches.

did you try hitting ctrl alt del, choosing task manager and run explorer.exe from inside it?
https://www.howtogeek.com/198815/us...art-explorer.exe-in-windows/#autotoc_anchor_2
you just need the restart part - it might work.

What are specs of the PC?

curious if it does same thing in safe mode, though it requires a restart.

1. go to settings/update & security/recovery
2. under advanced startup, click restart now button
3. this restarts PC in a blue menu
4. choose troubleshoot
5. choose advanced
6. choose startup options
7. click the restart button
8. choose a safe mode (it doesn't matter which) by using number associated with it.
9. Pc will restart and load safe mode

If its just loading to a blank screen, you could try unplugging all USB except kb/mouse, and any speakers/external drives as it can be the PC is trying to contact a device at start and isn't receiving a response so it waits... and waits...
I had that problem once and it was caused by speakers.

I would copy anything off PC you need to save while its still working, you might need to do a clean install to fix it. So saving any files you have to keep before hand to a the other drive.

On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB (probably good idea to make on a working pc)

 

[gslonesoldier84]

did you try hitting ctrl alt del, choosing task manager and run explorer.exe from inside it?
https://www.howtogeek.com/198815/us...art-explorer.exe-in-windows/#autotoc_anchor_2
you just need the restart part - it might work.

What are specs of the PC?

curious if it does same thing in safe mode, though it requires a restart.

1. go to settings/update & security/recovery
2. under advanced startup, click restart now button
3. this restarts PC in a blue menu
4. choose troubleshoot
5. choose advanced
6. choose startup options
7. click the restart button
8. choose a safe mode (it doesn't matter which) by using number associated with it.
9. Pc will restart and load safe mode

If its just loading to a blank screen, you could try unplugging all USB except kb/mouse, and any speakers/external drives as it can be the PC is trying to contact a device at start and isn't receiving a response so it waits... and waits...
I had that problem once and it was caused by speakers.

I would copy anything off PC you need to save while its still working, you might need to do a clean install to fix it. So saving any files you have to keep before hand to a the other drive.

On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB (probably good idea to make on a working pc)

I've made a win10 installer on USB now. But I'm too afraid to restart for the moment. Everything is set up on the machine and setting it all up again would be too much right now to remain functional.

I added a hard drive recently which is working fine but I unplugged a DVD drive and also have loads of stuff connected via USB. I will get that all connected so it's just the basic stuff when I try to restart.

Once I can restart, I will try again with those steps listed and let you know what happened.

Thank you!

P.S. What about all the smaller problems of some things not saving, Onedrive taskbar not starting again, and the drive letters having changed like that? (One Drive is on a drive whose letter hasn't changed)

 

[Colif]

can you right click start
choose disk management
expand next window so you can see top and bottom parts
you might need to take a photo of this and upload to an image sharing website and show link here (mainly since PC won't save anything)

the partition change might be explained by that photo. Or at least, let me see what happened.