Black Screen with Pointer only

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I was running v1909 with updates delayed, 180 days for Features & 30 days for Quality. Left the computer running Wed night, with all apps & misc background items shutdown, for the weekly maintenance of Backups & Defrag. Thursday morning all looked normal on the Desktop so I restarted the computer & all I got was a black screen & a mouse pointer. I searched & read that this is a similar issue with folks who upgraded to Win 2004 in earlier months. I don’t know if that somehow also happened during the night.

I believe the computer & Win10 is running somewhat as I can ping it with the static IP assigned and a Windows UPNP Service is functioning allowing syncing of the music app on my phone, accessing the playlist on this computer & then loading the music library selections on the NAS.

I used BIOS to reactivate the Intel integrated GPU & pulled the EVGA GPU card. That made no difference. Every bootup acts mostly normal. I get the usual Gigabyte MB splash & spinning dots, then Windows starts with new spinning dots and then the black screen. I never get to the password dialog as the display is black. The HDDs continue to spin for an unusually long time for a bootup. Instead of the normal 2-3 minutes they go for 15 minutes or longer.

I booted from a real Win10 1909 DVD & tried the available choices. Using the Command Prompt choice I can see all the different partitions & the folders/files on them. Windows on C;, big Apps & Suites on D:, misc on E:, storage, docs, etc on F:, Swap & Temp on G:. I’m running RAID10 so I believe that all my data is available & any necessary RAID drivers are running. In BIOS the boot selection for the RAID is “Windows Boot Manager (Intel Volume1)”

However, the DVD repair choices don’t function at all. The Startup Repair takes about 10 seconds & says “Startup Repair couldn’t repair your PC”. Then also, trying to “Uninstall the latest Quality and Features” both fail, indicating it can’t be done.

Choosing System Restore says “You must specify which Windows Installation to restore. Restart and select an OS and then select System Restore”. I can’t figure a way to do that with where I’m at now using the DVD and a new install now waiting on the temp X: drive.

I’m puzzled, did I get upgraded to 2004? Is there a file or folder I should check for as to filename, date or location to determine that? Have I just had a failure of some sort? How can I access some functional troubleshooting & repair tools?

Thanx all…..Len

 

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That sounds like the profile bug from earlier this year.

Try rebooting into Safe mode (press F8 as it boots), then reboot.

I assume you can press Ctrl Alt Del to reboot, yes? If not, holding down the power button for 3-5 seconds will shut the PC down.

cheers, Paul

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Thanx for responding Paul. I was concerned this issue scared everybody away.

Unfortunately when I let it try to fully boot and it’s in the black screen condition, Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn’t function. It’s so dead/unresponsive I was amazed that Windows services are running.

I thought MS took away the F8 into Safe Mode capability some time ago. To check, I tried that on my v1909 notebook….doesn’t work. I’ve read that you now need to get to the logon screen at a minimum to attempt to get to Safe Mode. Too bad, Safe Mode from Bootup used to help solve a LOT of issues.

Anyhow, I’ve tried everything I can find to get into Safe Mode, both from the 1909 DVD as well as from booting up tricks. All unsuccessful.

I think I doomed to a fresh install. Maybe a silver lining could be doing the v1909 install & then jumping right into 2004 before I go through all my program installs. That might reveal a possible cause of my crash & burn.

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https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode-in-windows-10-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234

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I had a similar problem with v1809 – getting into Safe Mode.

There was a sequence… courtesy of tenforums.com IIRC.

Switch on.  Leave it long enough to boot.  Switch off.

Repeat 3 times.

Power on.  The system “should” boot into Safe Mode.

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Well, thank you stranger! You got me going towards where I was heading.

To be specific, rebooting & while the Gigabyte MoBo logo was showing, as soon as I got the spinning dots, I did the hard shutdown using the long press of the power button. The very next boot gave me a notice of “Preparing Automatic Repair”. 10 seconds later I got a blue screen titled “Recovery.. Your PC couldn’t start properly.”….. Error code: 0xc0000185. Press F1 to enter Recovery Environment; F8 for Startup Settings; Esc for UEFI Firmware Settings. F1/RE just takes me to the Advanced Troubleshooting screen, been there a dozen times using the DVD. Esc/UEFI took me back into the BIOS, been there two dozen times. F8/Startup Settings took me where was trying to get to for 3 days, the Startup Settings screen!

Unfortunately, of the 9 choices presented, 3 were only to disable misc features, 3 were to enable debugging, boot logging & low-res mode, but 3 were Safe Mode choices….all 3 gave me just more black screens reaching out to infinity & beyond. I thing I’ve hit the end of the recovery rope.

I really hate rebuilding computers with nothing more wrong than exploding Windows, it’s such a waste of time & energy. Oh well…..been doing this since Win3.0, what’s one more time. Thanx again……Len

 

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Do you have an image backup on an external disk, taken before this started happening, and if so, do you have a bootable recovery disk for the backup software, which would boot into its  recovery environment and allow you to restore the backup?

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 20H2

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lwerman wrote:

Error code: 0xc0000185

That is a boot file corruption problem.

See this page for suggested fixes.
https://www.lifewire.com/fix-error-code-0xc0000185-4691254

cheers, Paul

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Well thanx again all! I’ve finally come up for some air….

The boot error seemed to be dependent on how I shut down/crashed/restarted & where I was at the time. I believe some restarts had issues with accessing the RAID10 cleanly.

Yaaaaaah, I’ve got images/backups, etc. but they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth & never very current & difficult w/o a screen. This computer has been used 12+ hours a day by my sweeter half for many years & has accumulated a collection of minor issues/bigger issues/work arounds/inconveniences & annoyances and was due for a new fresh complete reinstall. Since I have unfettered access to this beast, I may as well do everything I can, squeaky fan included.

Unfortunately, no good deed goes unpunished, & I wasted several hours dealing with trying to install with the DVD install giving me some “can’t install there because the HDDs are GPT” bs nonsense. Refused to allow an install to ANY partition. I upped the BIOS during troubleshooting as a initial step & double checked everything multiple times. So I put the .iso on a USB & all went well and a whole lot faster. I’m soooo glad I ALWAYS  setup computers with the OS, apps/programs, data, temp/swap, etc. all on separate partitions. Install locations, program data, everything just patiently waiting for the new installs. Very sweet. I even upped to v2004.

All is running quite well now, thank you. I’ll give this monster back to momma tonight & have a few beers. CHEERS!

 

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lwerman,
Congratulations, though I’m not sure that, in this day & age, installing apps & programs on a separate partition from the OS is still a good idea. Games (large) & data, certainly.
Zig

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