Black Screen on startup

Almost all the time i hit the power button to start my laptop, after the Microsoft logo, the screen remains black. All i can do is i hit the power button again (to go into sleep mode) and, as a detail, when it's going to sleep mode, some colors appears to my screen and then it's in the sleep mode. Only then i can hit the power button again and it starts ok, showing my profile picture and then the windows 8 start up screen.

My laptop configuration is :

ACER: I7-3630QM 2.4GHz

          NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 2GB

  8GB RAM

  1TB SSHD

My graphic card driver is up to date (another detail).

I have this problem from the beginning (i bought the laptop half a year ago). First i had windows 8 and the issue appeared rarely, but now (windows 8.1 i don't know if it matters) almost all my start-ups are like this. 

What can i do? What could be the problem? 

Thank you.

January 15th, 2014 2:44am

Disable intel proset monitor service if you installed or have intel network drivers, this solved the same issue you are having with windows 8.

How to disable this service.
Open a command prompt. Run as admin the text in red

sc stop "Intel(R) PROSet Monitoring Service"
sc config "Intel(R) PROSet Monitoring Service" start= disabled

Reverse the command, change stop to start, and disable to enable.


Or, you can uninstall Intel Network Connections from your computer by using the Add/Remove Program feature in the Window's Control Panel. The program Intel(R) Network Connections XXXXXXXXXXX, or maybe intel has update to the promonitor service since I last tried it.

It is perfectly save to remove this. Windows 8.1 networks does this task just as well with sync. If you have problems install proset again from the link below,remember to download the drivers before performing this operation.

Read  Intel proset monitor

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-016041.htm

For me removing this solved black screen issue as well as others.

Note:BEFORE DOING THIS OPERATION ALWAYS MAKE A RESTORE POINT!

Edit: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?keyword=PROWin32.exe&OSVersion=Windows+8*

In the download in the search text field, you will see PROWin32.exe, make sure you change the 32 to 64 if using 64bit OS







  • Edited by colakid a few seconds ago
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January 15th, 2014 6:18am

Disable intel proset monitor service if you installed or have intel network drivers, this solved the same issue you are having with windows 8.

How to disable this service.
Open a command prompt. Run as admin the text in red

sc stop "Intel(R) PROSet Monitoring Service"
sc config "Intel(R) PROSet Monitoring Service" start= disabled

Reverse the command, change stop to start, and disable to enable.


Or, you can uninstall Intel Network Connections from your computer by using the Add/Remove Program feature in the Window's Control Panel. The program Intel(R) Network Connections XXXXXXXXXXX, or maybe intel has update to the promonitor service since I last tried it.

It is perfectly save to remove this. Windows 8.1 networks does this task just as well with sync. If you have problems install proset again from the link below,remember to download the drivers before performing this operation.

Read  Intel proset monitor

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-016041.htm

For me removing this solved black screen issue as well as others.

Note:BEFORE DOING THIS OPERATION ALWAYS MAKE A RESTORE POINT!

Edit: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?keyword=PROWin32.exe&OSVersion=Windows+8*

In the download in the search text field, you will see PROWin32.exe, make sure you change the 32 to 64 if using 64bit OS







  • Edited by colakid Wednesday, January 15, 2014 11:47 AM
January 15th, 2014 2:16pm

I don't have intel network card. My network card is

-BroadCom Netlink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet

-Qualcomm Atheros AR5BWB222 Wireless Network Adapter

If i run what you said, it says "The specified service does not exist as an installed  service". From intel i have an integrated graphic card and the processor (which i don't think is the problem). Could this be because of this 2 graphic cards? Those are set on automatically choose which to use (when i'm not gaming, it's the intel on, and in the rest of time, nvidia is on. I guess INTEL Graphic Card is ON when i start my laptop. Could this be the problem? 

Thank you for your time.


  • Edited by RobertHehn Wednesday, January 15, 2014 1:28 PM
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January 15th, 2014 4:25pm

Those commands would return a does not exist. My suggestion only works if you use a intel  network card. Yes that is most likely the problem. I tried the proset and it seems to work  fine in 8.1.
January 15th, 2014 6:13pm

So, if the problem are those 2 graphic cards, what should i do now?

  • Edited by RobertHehn Wednesday, January 15, 2014 4:41 PM
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January 15th, 2014 7:41pm

I am wondering if it isn't an issue with your display settings being out of range for your monitor. I am working a system that has 3 video cards, 2 of which support hi resolution 4k graphics for a projection system in a night club. Every once in a while a cold boot selects the 3rd video card which cannot support the resolution. I get exactly what you are seeing. I have to boot using the F8 key and select VGA mode to get control of the system again.
January 15th, 2014 7:48pm

I believe, when I start the pc, the (automatically) selected graphic card is INTEL (i assume). So you're saying that maybe sometimes, out of nowhere, it tries to start with NVIDIA? But that would be idiotic, because my resolution is 1366x768, which I don't think is so needy. I think that both graphic cards should support my resolution. I tried once to disable the integrated card, but my BIOS has incredible few options i can change (graphic card isn't one of them).
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January 15th, 2014 8:03pm

Robert, I had the same issue and here's how I corrected it.  Mine is an Asus UX51VZ and I have both the Intel onboard video and NVidia GT650M.  The problem is related to the NVidia drivers....at least it was for me.  I had downloaded the newest Nvidia drivers and had them on my desktop.  For some reason, not sure what I was thinking, I went into Control Panel and deleted the old ones thinking that was the best way to install the new ones as a "clean install."  I didn't realize that when you double click the NVidia driver install file, it will give you the option for a clean install and will do it by itself.  After I made this mistake, on the next startup I got a totally black screen with everything else running and fans spinning.  With mine the mouse pointer actually worked, but a black screen.  I could put it to sleep and wake it up and briefly saw some colors flash.

In my case, I just kept trying to restart it, and on the 3rd restart the blue recovery screen came up allowing me to get into Safe Mode (I think there is a key you can push on startup to get to Safe Mode by pushing one of the Function keys, but I'm at work now and not sure which one).  In your case since you can eventually get into your system, I think you can enable Recovery or Start Mode on the next startup by going into the Settings on the Charms Bar.  If you can do this, download the latest NVidia drivers for the 640M from their site (be sure they are for Windows 8.1 and 32 or 64 bit OS).  Put the file on your desktop.  Get into Safe Mode (I bet your video starts up just fine in Safe Mode) then install the NVidia drivers using the Clean Install option.  Let me know if this works for you.  Dave


  • Edited by Davidoo1 Wednesday, January 15, 2014 5:52 PM
January 15th, 2014 8:52pm

Thank you for taking your time to respond. When my black screen appears, i can also see the mouse pointer. I have installed NVIDIA Experience and all my updates are installed automatically. I'll try what you said right now and i'll come back with results.

UPDATE:

I did what you said, i downloaded latest driver from NVIDIA, i booted into safe mode, i checked "Clean Install" and hit INSTALL. After removing current version, it asked for restart so i restarted (i had checked to boot in safe mode from msconfig before) and it entered again in safe mode. Normally, the installation should picked up from where it left, but nothing happened (probably because it was in safe mode), so I clicked again on install, clean install and done. Then i unchecked "boot in safe mode" and when I restarted the pc, this happened "http://postimg.org/image/k3ikmoon7/". I guess it was because when i first tried to install the driver, after reboot it should have started the installer, but probably safe mode got in the way and when i restarted in normal mode it tried to access the installer again. I hope this is why this happened. After I clicked ok, everything went fine.

First result is that, when this error popped, at least it passed the black screen, so it's a step forward. I hope it's all resolved now, but i'll come with further results. Thank you again.

  • Edited by RobertHehn Wednesday, January 15, 2014 6:30 PM
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January 15th, 2014 9:04pm

When my black screen appears, i can also see the mouse pointer.

That's not a "black" screen but a "blank" one.  E.g. you see light at the edges, right?

Many nVidia users seem to be discovering that they also get a phantom monitor, e.g. if you hooked up a second monitor when you had your "blank" screen you might find that it would be showing your primary output.  A workaround in this circumstance, is to use the Win-P dialog to try changing the display configuration,  e.g. press Win-P, CursorUp, Enter and watching (and listening) is likely to produce some new symptom.

A related thing that you could try is booting in VGA mode.  I recently discovered that even if we boot in that mode we can easily revert to normal video, e.g., again by using Win-P, so presumably (at least for AMD users) even more easily using a Catalyst Control Center hot key to refresh the display.  I have been waiting to tell someone who is having boot problems about this but maybe you can make use of it too.   ; )

 

HTH

January 16th, 2014 6:59am

Ok then, i had a blank screen. Are you saying that, when my blank screen appears, i could press win+p and you think i could see that options? I'll give it a try, but for now I tried what Davidoo said and i'm waiting for a few start ups to see if that did the job. Currently, after 2 start ups, everything works fine. Thank you Robert for your time. If i get a blank screen again, i'll try what you said and i'll come back with results. 
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January 16th, 2014 10:12am

UPDATE:

[specified module nvi2.dll could not be found]

I think that would be a good reason to try using the VGA mode boot.   ; )
January 16th, 2014 12:49pm

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