Black Screen With Flashing Cursor Caused By 3rd HDD?
Oct 4, 2013
I recently started having the black screen with the flashing cursor come up sometimes when I start my PC. I have narrowed it down as being my 3rd HDD (2TB WD) as the culprit, which I only use as media storage. It is not set as a boot device since windows is on my SSD and when I unplug the drive from my mobo, windows always starts up without any issue.
Basically my question is, is this just a case of a hard drive going bad? I ran chkdsk on all 3 drives and none of them had any issues and it is not fragmented or anything that I can tell, so I don't know. I have had this setup for a while now and about a month ago it started doing this. The screen doesn't always come up however, so I have no clue what the issue is.
I had to reinstall the whole machine from scratch because old HDD has been playing up. This is what I did:
1. Imaged old (faulty) drive to new one - just because I needed some data out of it and the old one was very slow and freezing. 2. run the system with new imaged drive - all working except sometimes it was playing up, so I decided to upgrade to another drive with Windows 8.1 from Win7 3. have plugged in new HDD to SATA0 port and the imaged drive to port SATA2 4. installed Windows 8.1, copied data over, reinstalled applications and so on. 5. all working perfectly. Now every time I boot up the machine, I'm offered options if I want to boot to Windows 8.1 or Win7. No problem there. 6. Now I wanted to remove the imaged HDD from SATA2 port, so I did - and here comes the problem:
All I get now is the black screen with flashing cursor in top left corner. How is this possible ? When I plug the second drive in all works as before. I just have to remove the second drive. How can I do this? In the attached image you can see my drives from Windows 8.1 the Disk0 is the one I need to keep - that's a Windows 8.1 ( C: ) Disk1 (imaged HDD) is the one with Win7 on it and needs to be removed.
My little brother has an 8.1 laptop, and from what I understand, when it prompted him for updates he clicked to restart. Now when the laptop tries to restart he sees his manufacturer logo and the Windows 8 loading circle, but after this the monitor goes black and stays that way. At some point a bluescreen pops up, says something about fixing the PC, goes to 100% after 5 minutes, restarts the PC, and the PC goes back to the manufacturer logo to start the loop again.
I have recently installed windows updates and after restart the black screen occurred after I typed my password. About five days before that I have reinstalled my Mobile Intel 4 series driver and now in Device manager it shows 3 grayed out monitors which were installed when I have reinstalled the Video driver. The monitor driver that Is currently loaded was installed when I installed the OS itself.
One day i tried to start my computer. Once it started i booted up steam only to see that none of my games were installed. Hmm. So i opened up my computer and saw that one of my SATA cables came unplugged. After plugging it back in my computer did a system check on all of my hard drives. Once that was completed my computer restarted and went to the swirly windows logo and then to a black screen with a mouse pointer that i could move...that's it. I've tried a few things from looking it up like booting into safe mode, trying to log in with the black screen still up, taking out the video card and putting it back in and nothing, just goes to the black screen. I don't have a windows 8 disk so i can't attempt to fix it that way nor do i have my 8 key on hand. i built my desktop so its nowhere on my rig.
I have my laptop running windows 8, and whenever i boot it up it just shows the "HP" logo and then the spinning dots on the bottom, then it just goes to a black screen with a cursor on it. Now I cant do anything with this, seeing as it is windows 8 I cant boot it into safe mode from startup. I have an HP Envy Laptop.
My MSI GE70 laptop with windows 8 64 has recently been having an issue while watching videos (whether it is a downloaded file or a stream) where the screen will suddenly go black and the sound will go away, but the cursor will still be visible with the spinning circle to show me it is working on something. It will just stay black and nothing will respond, even CTRL-ALT-DEL. The only way to fix it is to restart the computer by holding down the power button. It doesn't give me any error messages before this happens or on start up afterwards. It isn't overheating, and I didn't install any new drivers before this started.
I recently upgraded my dell 1645 from windows 7 to 8.
I installed most of the drivers from the dell website even though they were meants for win 7. For some of them I installed drivers directly from the device manufacturers website.
When the computer first starts up it passes the windows logo, and then a black screen is shown (no cursor) for a good 5 minutes. Then it advances to the login (seatle cartoon image) and everything works perfectly.
I had another issue before that I think I solved which was the intel rapid storage technology. Whenever the computer would go to sleep I got a windows BSOD saying driver_irql_less_than_or_equal. But after installing the newest intel rapid storage drivers sleep seams to work perfectly.
The drivers I installed from the manufacturers that arent on the official 1645 driver page:
- ati radeon drivers from ati - synaptics drivers - bluetooth 380 drivers, supposed to be 370 I believe but it seems to only be 380 available which people say works.
I also tried running the intel chipset automatic check, which said I was on the latest.
So I go to CMD (administrator) and run SFC/ Scannow
"Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service"
then, chkdsk x: /f
Cannot lock current drive, windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected. I ended up erasing the HDD and starting from scratch and STILL get the same issue.
My laptop has been acting really weird the last couple of weeks. It would crash randomly, and sometimes when I picked it up to put it somewhere else, it crashed too.
Now, I thought this was a problem with Windows 8.1, because it didn't behave like this before with normal Windows 8. So I Refreshed my laptop, and after that it worked again, without crashing.
I left it in sleep mode while I got some sleep too, and when I booted it up this morning, it crashed again.
After that the whole laptop wouldn't boot up, and now the only thing that shows is a cursor on a black screen, and it seems to be stuck in sleep mode, because I can't even turn it off completely manually. So I can't access the BIOS or make it boot up in Safe Mode.What the hell should I do?
Specs:
Toshiba Sattelite L50-A-15U
Windows 8 64-bit
Intel i7 4th generation processor with Intel HD4600 graphics card
I upgraded from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 8.1 Pro about a week ago. Everything seems fine, unless I leave the computer idle for a long time. What happens is I get a black screen, with no cursor, when I return to the computer after leaving it idle overnight. It is not asleep. It is also not frozen. I can tell because I am able to reboot it while it's like this by:
The computer reboots just fine when I do this. Could it be a bad display driver perhaps? I have an AMD Radeon HD 7950 and am using the latest display drivers from AMD.
Somehow i incidentally downloaded Windows 8.1 ( which i do not want to be installed to my Sony Vaio Laptop) but i thought that i will just download it , and NOT INSTALL IT ......and i DID NOT INSTALL IT , since after upgrading , it asked me if i wanted to install windows 8.1 , and i selected NO ..... my laptop turned off , and when i turned it on , now a black screen appears with the white cursor moving around the screen..... I click the Assist button , and i can't get a sony vaio care menu ..... Basically nothing displays , no configure ... I am stuck and can't use my laptop anymore
My windows 8 pc when booted, mostly freezes after i see my account picture with a circling dots. Then appears a black screen and just my cursors, but nothing else. I try to get task manager and run explorer.exe but it doesn't work. It has now been happening very much. I have installed the OS just a few days back and i got this issue. This also happens when i sign out/switch from my account to another account.
I shut down my computer last night. It runs 8.1 and when I shut it down I do not believe it installed updates.i tried to boot it. It boots and after I type in my PIN, shows my desktop for a few seconds. Then, my display will either turn black or a blueish grey. There is no cursor. It does this every reboot now. I can not do anything except reset when it happens.
System info:
Two GTX 760's in SLI Two Asus monitors
Possible culprits:
1 - I have Actual Multiple Monitors trial installed. The freezing/display blanking seems to happen when the trial time left window shows up, but that may be coincidence. 2 - I heard graphics card driver updates and windows updates can clash in some way and cause a similar issue. From what I've read, a cursor is still on screen and task manager can be opened with CTRL SHIFT ESC. Neither of these work for me. 3- Virus? I have avast so I doubt it.
I just installed 8.1 on my Samsung Series 7 Chronos laptop and it's now unusable. All I get after a reboot now is a blank screen and a vanishing cursor. I can't do CTRL+ALT+DEL or any other button combination. I also can't seem to be able to do a system restore as a restore point doesn't seem to exist for some odd reason. I've also tried the boot into low res mode but I get the same result. The only thing that seems to work is booting into Safe Mode with Networking but that doesn't allow me to install/uninstall anything so it's pretty much useless.
My Windows8PC shows black screen with only mouse cursor instead of login screen. I tried chkdsk but it shows no errors. Even when i start in safe mode the screen stays black. I think it's a graphic driver problem, but i dont know how i can deactivate or delete the installed driver via cmd.
I just updated my Windows 8.1 when I restarted my PC. When I was going to login, it was just a black screen. If you are in the login screen, the selected language in the right left corner and the internet connection in the left corner. Both of those two signs are flickering in the corners. And my cursor is also flickering.
Upgraded to Windows 8.1 Pro from 8 through the Windows Store. Everything seemed to go smoothly. Updated graphics card drivers prior to install of 8.1. Now whenever I start up, I can log in, but then it goes to a black screen with a cursor. Ctrl-Alt-Del will bring up the task manager and from there I can access programs and get on the internet. So after maybe 5 minutes or so after opening a program (usually firefox) the Metro screen randomly loads. None of the store apps worked, though I was able to find a fix for that. Some of them still don't work right though. Is there a better way to upgrade from 8 other than through the store?
Last week my laptop had trouble starting up, it had a problem with atidvag.dll if I recall. I wasn't sure what to do but I got lucky and after a few attempts in managed to boot. Now however it doesn't even get to the point where it could tell me what is wrong, no Windows logo. Just straight in black screen with a cursor in the top left. F2 will take me to BIOS (if I am quick), but no other keys work. Booted onto installation media to try startup repair, no joy, rollback also no joy, tried using command line following the instructions here to force a boot into safe mode but no joy.
I have a problem in my dual boot machine. I decided to remove Linux mint 17 from my dual boot with windows 8. I used easeus partition manager to delete the partitions associated (root, home and swap). Then I got unallocated space just before my windows partition. So I moved my windows partition to the extreme left possible. Then I merged this unallocated space with my second storage partition.
These steps required reboot (specifically the moving of windows partition). When I rebooted my PC I got an error that grub was not found. I realized that I had forgot to fix MBR and load windows boot loader. So I used windows 7 recovery disk (yes windows 7 as I don't have windows8 recovery or installation disk). I got a windows 7 style boot loader instead of windows 8's graphical one which has advanced recovery options built in. But I proceeded. Then eases did its job with the partitions. After a reboot now I am stuck at a black screen after entering my password with a movable mose cursor. I can only press Ctrl+alt+del. Selecting task manager from it does nothing.
Since I don't have windows 8 disks and windows 8 boot loader I am not able to refresh or reset my PC. Neither can I shift restart my PC to get advanced boot options. One more thing to note, that while entering password, I noticed that the lock screen and account pictures have changed to defaults of a freshly installed windows.
I just got a new laptop (Toshiba Satellite C850) that came with Windows 7 pre-installed so I decided to get windows 8 Pro at the discounted price. I downloaded it and so far I love it. However, one thing I noticed was that when I am using some downloaded apps (Shazam, Khan Academy, etc...) these crooked, horizontal black lines appear at the top of the screen every once and a while and almost make the screen shake.
I Have a problem with my HP NV6-1126SA Laptop which came with Windows 8. I have done a windows 8 update which has caused my screen to become very dim. I have tried
The basic adjusting setups for example the FN and brightness key which does not work.The lower right corner adjust which are on full and still no effect on the screens brightness.Scanned with Anti-MalwareBytes and removed the two trojansThe SFC Scan had repaired some of the errors except the brightness of the screen.Disk Check found no errors
I have recently used your removal tool to remove McAfee from my laptop and manually removed Norton Internet Security. I do have Windows Defender on there.
I was wondering if i should replace Windows Defender with Microsoft Security Essential? Also I want to identify the problem with my brightness of the screen if it is software related.
My PC was working fine before today, until I used Ultra UXtheme patcher for Windows 8 x64 and then applied a custom VS for Windows 8.
After a restart, Windows Explorer was not launching, so I opened task manager and did a sfc /scannow. After a reboot, I get to the Windows 8 boot menu (I have a dual-boot on this HDD with win7), and then the screen just turns on and off every few seconds, with the numlock light flickering with the screen.
I tried using the automatic repair, both from the boot menu and from a backup USB, but it does not detect anything. and I still have the same issue.
I restored the backups of uxtheme.dll, uxinit.dll, and themeui.dll, but that didn't work either.
Attached is my ntbtlog.txt.
There is no BSOD, the HDD keeps on spinning a few minutes after boot, and the numlock keeps on flashing. Anything else I can do from my win7 install? I'm currently trying to delete the theme.
Deleting the theme doesn't work, safemode doesn't work either. It seems to be a driver issue, but there were no driver updates when it was working?
I have a Windows 8 HP laptop and the screen is just flashing. I have looked through other users posts and tried a few things but nothing is fixing the issue. I can't get past the flashing screen to enter Control panel, Safe boot or anything as the flashing is preventing me getting anywhere!! Lots of photos not backed up so don't want to lose them!
I turned on my laptop and after I logged on all my letters were replaced with symbols. I then restarted my laptop and now even my log in screen is symbols and when I get to the desktop my screen just keeps flashing and I can't click on anything. It just keeps flashing and loading nothing. I can't do anything on it. I didn't install anything the last time it was on either and I'm the only person who uses the laptop.
I was messing around with my screen resolution settings when I switch over to portrait mode on desktop PC. When I hit apply the screen started flashing and it went to protrait. I saw thye option to revery back but with they screen flashing I couldn't hit it. Then the settings set in and the screen went back to the sigin in menu in portrait.
I can enter my password, sign in, and then it tries to load the start menu but the screen starts flashing and after about 8 seconds, it goes back to the sign in menu. Now I am stuck in this process and cant get back past the sign in screen to access the control panel and set the screen back to landscape.
i was customizing my desktop with Rainmeter and i wanted to know how to change my toolbar's color because i didnt want the blue, someone said to download Vistaglazz and repatch some files. after doing so my computer restarted and after the initial normal startup and it saying "Please wait..." like it usually does before it shows the login users, the screen went black, then for a split second the screen went pitch black, almost as if the computer turned off, then it would turn on again and go back to the normal "Please wait..." screen. this would be ok but its happening so fast and over and over again that i cant even hit f8 or Ctrl Alt Delete. im using a different computer because i literally cant log onto the other one.
i have a dell 5520 inspiron laptop which i bought 2 months ago . Yeasterday while starting the laptop , just after the lock screen , i pressed a key on the keyboard, but the login page was not visible ,i could not access my account .
I have recently installed a new Video Card a Gigabyte GeForce 660 GTX, when I'm playing video's or if I open the Geforce Experience program from the task bar the screen goes blank for about a second then returns to normal, it always seems to happen when I get the program to check for updates. I am using the latest driver 320.49.
When I play games there's no problem occur so I don't think it's the card it's self, I suspect it's something to do with the program.
I recently upgraded to windows 8.1 from windows 7. Installation went fine and first time I loaded into windows perfectly. I only installed the following: killer enthernet driver and google chrome (also nobodies graphics driver)I reset my computer and it goes through the logo then goes into a blank blue screen where I can move my cursor.What I've tried: I can log into safe mode. Right now I am resetting the PC (file wipe). I can't seem to attach an image on mobile.
