Question Windows 10 won't boot - Black Screen

[person31]

Hi,

I recently updated my Windows 10 from 1703 (I think) to 1803. To do this I had to download the update manually because it always failed to install on previous attempts. Now, whenever I start my PC it does the POST fine but then I am met with nothing but a black screen. No cursor, no Windows logo displayed. I did try rebooting a few times and one of the times I let it run for roughly 4 hours while I was out the house. When I came back I think it said something like "Scanning for errors. This could take more than 1 hour" and it booted into Windows shortly after. When I had this active Windows session I decided to create another partition and install Windows 8.1 on that partition just in case. I am now using 8.1 temporarily but I would like to go back to 10 as it has all my data and settings/files on it. I have looked at other threads but a lot of them report having a cursor. I have tried their solutions anyway but none have been successful. Can anybody help?

PC Specs:
Gigabyte 78lmtUSB3
AMD FX8350
8gb DDR3
Seagate 1tb 7200
Aerocool VP-850


Thanks for reading. Any help is much appreciated!

 

[person31]

Forgot to mention that if I try to emulate the successful boot by letting it run for a few hours, it still doesn't boot and has a black screen. Left it on for 8 hours today and was still on the black screen when I returned.

 

[justbaffled]

Hi,

I have had similar issues trying to just install win 10 (black screen on boot) and for me it turned out to be win 10 trying to set a refresh rate that my monitor did not like.

The following may work:

If you have a recovery drive which allows you to get at the startup options (mine won't) you might be able to select lo-res mode and boot into a visible screen. From that you should be able to get into your display settings and check the refresh rate is not something silly. For me windows was setting it to 75hz and my monitor cant go higher than 60.

If however you don't have a win10 recovery drive, or like mine there is no way to get at the start up options then you might be able to press F8 on boot to get the options. It may not work as Microsoft have turned this off in win 10 (sigh) or your PC's bios might use F8 for something else (mine displays its boot screen).

I wish you luck its taken me weeks of frustration to fix.