Got a new laptop with Windows 8 and was exploring.  I think I went into settings and dialed down the brightness setting.  My screen went black and I can't do anything.  No shortcut keys, no mouse, no cursor, no Task Manager, nothing.  It's a brand new Lenovo Yoga 2.  Please help.  So far, this is NOT my favorite OS.  It's not business user friendly and I have 30+ years in the field.

Hi,

Since the computer is new, I suggest contacting manufacture to do a hardware testing.

Before that, Lets try to boot into WinRE by using recovery disk or bootable USB, then try to restore the system.

How to Create Bootable Windows 8 USB Drive from ISO Image

http://www.guidingtech.com/10026/create-bootable-windows-8-usb-drive-iso-image/

Once we can get into Windows, I suggest we update the video card driver by downloading the latest one applied to Windows 8 from manufacturers website.

Hope these could be helpful.

screen went black and I can't do anything.  No shortcut keys, no mouse, no cursor, no Task Manager, nothing.

Did you try  Win-Enter  (with your speakers turned on)?   <eg>

Davesmom,

Its not possible to adjust the brightness down to the point where the screen is completely black. 

In order to correct your issue, youll need to access the recovery partition on your hard drive.  Some manufacturers provide a way of doing so by pressing one or more keys during startup.  Youll need to look at your computers documentation to see if that information is provided.

Otherwise, in order to do this, youll need your USB recovery drive.  If you dont already have one and you have access to another Windows 8.1 computer, you can create a USB recovery drive from it.  If none of these options are available, youll need to contact your computer manufacturer.

Once you have your recovery drive, you can insert it into your computer and boot from it.  Follow the on screen directions and youll be able to restore your computer to its original configuration.

Mike

Windows Outreach Team IT Pro

I think I went into settings and dialed down the brightness setting.  My screen went black and I can't do anything.

Have you checked your User Guide?   (Or tried hooking up a second monitor)  Right beside the Decrease brightness button there is a  Toggle display off and on button.   In fact, two of them.  Beside that there is a  Turns off/on the backlight of the LCD screen.   What does that mean?   Then searching (Ctrl-f) for backlight finds Fn+Space would do it too (on some models).  Still no explanation of what it means though.

Continuing find.   Chapter 4.  Troubleshooting.  "Screen goes blank" ... press F9 to confirm whether the backlight of the LCD screen has been turned off.  That information is repeated in another troubleshooting suggestion.  Sounds important but still no explanation of what it actually does.

screen going completely black? do you see the initial Splash screen when you restart the system? Do you have an external monitor you can test? sometimes resetting BIOS could help.  Refer to your user manual for any on-board diagnostics the manufacturer might have built into the system?

Win8 might be here to stay. cant got back to using Typewriter. Looking forward to those days where I do not need any mouse, keyboard or start-button. Everything done my gestures!!