Windows 8.1 stuck on black screen with cursor after login

[Kidneybot]

Not sure why this is happening. Everything was fine on my PC last night, I haven't installed anything new recently, etc. I turned it on this morning and Windows boots fine and everything, I can even enter my password but after that I'm stuck on a black screen with my mouse. I can move the cursor around and go to press CTRL+ALT+DEL but the task manager will freeze when I open it.

I've tried the following:

• 
  Booting into safe mode with command prompt to do a verification scan. it detected no violations.
  
  Booting into safe mode with networking. The same thing happened, black screen with just my cursor.
  
  Performing a system restore. It didn't change anything.

Where should I go from here? I don't know why this is happening and I really hope I don't have to lose everything and start over for no good reason.

My PC specs:
Windows 8.1 Pro (was on latest update)
CPU: AMD A6-6400K 3.9 GHz
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A55M
GPU: ASUS Radeon HD 7950
RAM: 8.0 GB

 

[tezpez]

I had the dreaded Windows 8.1 black screen - no ability to ctrl + alt + delete into cmd, no live tiles, no nothing. Happened after I switched from a Microsoft online account to a local account.

Fixed it by booting in to safe mode with cmd prompt (I think you're meant to press f8 on bootup repeatedly?) and creating a local admin account from cmd using the following commands (not inc brackets):

1: "net user /add [username of your choice] [password]"
2: "net localgroup administrators [username you picked] /add"

and then Rebooted, ctrl+alt+deleted, switched account and Hey Presto! New profile, all apps and updates were still installed, though reconfiguring all the shortcuts took a bit. Eh, Beats a re-install.

Thought I might share coz it took me hours to figure out.

 

[DatGamingDude]

I did this already and it worked. I enabled a guest account and then logged into it and I stayed on it doing miscellaneous things like surf the web, etc. (You should not have a black screen in a guest profile) I then pressed ctrl+alt+delete and clicked on switch user and I signed into the account that had the black screen problem and it loaded up like normal. :lol:

 

[flyke]

(working solution here if you keep on reading)

I had the same problem right after installation:
I had just bought a windows 8.1 pro key from the official Microsoft Store. I installed this over my existing windows keeping my programs, files and folders. So I did not do a clean install and I did not formatted my drive because I did not want to loose all my files and have to reinstall all my programs again. Windows installed without any problem. After installation was done, the computer booted to the login screen, where I have 2 accounts (one user account for me that is both an administrator and a hotmail (Outlook) account) and one account (normal hotmail account) for my wife.

I logged in with my account and was presented with a complete black screen after login. At first I thought windows was still loading so I waited. Then I realised it was not doing anything, and that I did have a working mouse cursor, but I could not do anything. After reboots still the same.

I wasted many hours to fix this, but I finally found it.
My problem seems to originate from the fact that, apparently, my previous windows version was a pirated one.

Fix:
- After login, on the black screen, press ctrl+alt+del and start Task Manager
- An error pops up, klick OK, same error pops up again, click OK again.
- Normally you have a running Task Manager now.
- For me, If i did file - new task: 'explorer.exe' -> nothing happened. check if you have the same problem
- I needed to start the file browser, and since explorer.exe did nothing, I resulted in: File -> New Task: 'iexplore'
- now Internet Explorer opens. In the address bar, type 'c:'
- great, we now have a file browser window
- go to c:\windows\system32 and right click on cmd.exe -> run as administrator
- in command prompt go to (hidden) folder C:\Windows Activation Technologies
- if you are in this folder in command prompt with admin rights, type 'del *' so you delete all files in this folder. This is a very important step, this folder absolutely must be empty
- after this, type 'sfc /scannow'
- this will restore all important windows files
- this can take a while. When it is done, restart your computer

If you had the same problem as me, then now it is fixed. Enjoy your working computer again.

 

[Ratheesh KP]

removed one spyware program which was running from Task manager and deleted it from its file location.. need a logoff after deleting that program.

 

[kyledoherty97]

Remove or update StartIsBack if you have it installed. This did the trick for me.

how did you remove it without accessing your computer? im having same problem

 

[Mr Fixer]

Not sure why this is happening. Everything was fine on my PC last night, I haven't installed anything new recently, etc. I turned it on this morning and Windows boots fine and everything, I can even enter my password but after that I'm stuck on a black screen with my mouse. I can move the cursor around and go to press CTRL+ALT+DEL but the task manager will freeze when I open it.

I've tried the following:

• 
  Booting into safe mode with command prompt to do a verification scan. it detected no violations.
  
  Booting into safe mode with networking. The same thing happened, black screen with just my cursor.
  
  Performing a system restore. It didn't change anything.

Where should I go from here? I don't know why this is happening and I really hope I don't have to lose everything and start over for no good reason.

My PC specs:
Windows 8.1 Pro (was on latest update)
CPU: AMD A6-6400K 3.9 GHz
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A55M
GPU: ASUS Radeon HD 7950
RAM: 8.0 GB