• Changed type Niki HanModerator Monday, October 21, 2013 1:53 AM
• Changed type Alex ZhaozxMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Wednesday, November 13, 2013 5:07 AM should be a question

"I just upgrade to win 8.1 pro from 8.0 pro. After logout and login. Nothing display. I can only use ctrl-alt-del to start the task manager."

I have this exact issue after updating 8 to 8.1 Pro x64.  I can also move the mouse cursor.  If I wait 5-6 minutes, it will eventually log in.  This issue occurs after every logout/restart.

**EDIT**

Disabling the "App Readiness" service resolved my issue:

• Run --> msconfig --> Services Tab --> Uncheck "App Readiness" --> Apply/Okay --> Reboot

** I did not have issues running metro apps, as others have mentioned.  This solution only resolves the issue of the black screen while attempting to load the desktop after logging in.

• Edited by dsDoan Thursday, November 28, 2013 3:41 AM Resolution
• Proposed as answer by nanobacha Tuesday, April 15, 2014 6:21 AM

I have been fighting with this all day with no luck, but I have been able to make a bit of "progress".  

1) Automatic repair failed.

2) No restore point set (I'm an idiot)

3) Changed startup settings to Enable debugging mode

a) This allowed me to load into Windows 8.1 normally for a few minutes.  Then I got a BSOD with a service_thread_exception_not_handled (igdkmd64.sys)

b) This led me to update my on board intel driver.  But that led to more BSOD with no .sys file mentioned

4) I could not update my video card driver because it is not allowed in safe mode.

Nothing loads for me if I leave the black screen and it will not recognize a ctrl-alt-del command.

**EDIT**

I removed all my display drivers but could not load Windows properly.  BUT, it did load when I set the startup settings to Enable debug.  Now I am updating my drivers with no crashes (yet).  Then I will see if it will startup properly.

• Edited by bigsly Friday, October 18, 2013 3:20 AM progress?

> I just upgrade to win 8.1 pro from 8.0 pro. After logout and login. Nothing display. I can only use ctrl-alt-del to start the task manager.

Utter nightmare.

Like an idiot I did the same thing and upgraded Win8.0 Pro ==> Win8.1 Pro, and all I get is a totally black screen. If I move the mouse the mouse pointer (white arrow) appears for a second or so. 

In my case control/alt/delete has no effect to screen. And I cant get F8 nor shift/F8 to work during reboot and so I cant get to boot into safe mode.

How do I uninstall Windows 8.1 ?

My hardware: a new Samsung Series 7 Ultra Notebook 128GB SSD 13.3"  Model:  NP740U3E-S04UK.

Thanks

J

• Edited by JS69 Friday, October 18, 2013 12:11 PM

• Edited by colakid Wednesday, October 23, 2013 9:28 PM

I'll chip in with some additional information and see if that helps, since nobody posted a detailed flow yet.

While I have the same problem as everyone else, I am running on a homebuilt desktop system with a Radeon HD 6850.

In detail, the problem manifests as that the startup proceeds as normal, including loading login screen graphics to past the point where I enter my password. When the prompt changes to "Welcome", the spinning dots animation commences and nothing else happens for about a minute, after which a black screen is loaded. At this point, the mouse pointer still works but not the start button or any normal windows hotkey, except Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Bringing up a Task Manager allows me to start and run programs, but neither starting, shutting down and restarting explorer actually produces any effective result. I can't find any special process running, such as Trouble reporting or similar. IE or desktop programs run fine.

After a few more minutes, maybe three, the desktop or start screen loads as usual, but the start screen is corrupted. Most Modern Apps only display some internal name and no icon, but a few (such as economy and store, for instance) show content in their livetiles. Attempting to start one of the internal name ones, such as mail, yields an error, while starting one with a working livetile opens a blank screen with no possibility to interact. The start screen/Modern UI app problem is persistent.

All desktop applications run as normal.

A few observations and failed troubleshooting attempts:

All available updates were downloaded.

The graphics drivers that were installed with the 8.1 update were 8.13, in other words ancient. Updating to 13.9 or the latest beta 13.11 (both supposedly working with 8.1, and worked fine in the consumer preview) did not help.

Uninstalling the last month of programs did nothing.

The store icon said "Win 8.1 Consumer Preview", but at the actual app page the proper Win 8.1 Pro was displayed.

No other driver conflicts, and no reported logs (Can I log what is happening post-login somehow?).

• Proposed as answer by Kisan Adhikari Tuesday, November 19, 2013 1:54 PM

I been using msdn setup of win 8.1.  When the update of win 8.1 came available, I installed 3 updates from windows update. kb-2898742, kb-2883200, kb-2895219, I got this black screen after one of these updates. I did not get this with msdn upgrade or preview of 8.1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2895219

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2883200

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2884846

Kb-2883200 may be it

Improvements

• Push-button reset and boot experience:  Stabilizes the boot experience. Fits and finishes changes in push-button reset (PBR) and refresh. (Client and Server)
• In-box apps:  Provides reliability and stabilization fixes for inbox apps, including Camera, Photo, and Video Viewer. Stabilizes SkyDrive integration with inbox apps. (Client)
• Graphics and multimedia platform:   Improves graphics and multimedia reliability and performance, including stabilized visuals across power states. Improves 3D performance. Improves the handling of PlayTo. (Client)
• File server and clustering:  Improves Enterprise Client Sync experience. Resolves reliability issues in continuous availability (CA) and backup scenarios involving failover clustering, Hyper-V, iSCSI and DedDup. (Server)
• Hyper-V:  Provides general virtualization reliability fixes in Hyper-V, Network Virtualization, and Remote Desktop Virtualization for large deployments. (Server)

• Edited by colakid Thursday, October 24, 2013 10:08 AM

• Edited by dsDoan Friday, October 25, 2013 6:19 PM

Here is mine CBS log, i had the same problem. Maybe u can find something interesting. https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=3A0A968764FBCDC5!840&authkey=!ALpgU3e0otB4DOY

Installed new components excepting telnet server and did sfc /scannow from escalated cmd. Few minutes and 2 restarts - and bingo! Now i have my desktop and metro panel back

• Edited by Hellchickens Saturday, October 26, 2013 5:25 PM

I've tried a few more things, prompted by some googling.

Updating BIOS and Audio drivers. No luck.

Disabling fast startup. No luck.

sfc /scannow. No luck.

Checkdisk. Nope.

Reboot in safe mode. Fast login. This prompted some more troubleshooting, first disabling all autorun with no success, then disabling all services causing a prompt login. Tried a few unique semi-randomly, but no luck on finding the specific one(s).

Enabled (in msconfig, for the curious) ntbtlog, comparing the results from the safe mode login to the "normal and unusually delayed", finding that there's a few entries of:

BOOTLOG_NOT_LOADED \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\dxgkrnl.sys

and then one of:

BOOTLOG_NOT_LOADED \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\WdFilter.sys

The first is the DirectX-kernel, sounds suspicious, the second has to to with the malware scanner.

Did some more googling on these entries, and it turns out the first is fairly commonly associated with slow startups. One mentioned something which sounds like dxgkrnl trying to boot up multiple times, which seems like what was indicated in the ntbtlog.txt.

Enough for now, but will try to find some time stamps in the bootlog to verify the theory and do a bubble search on the services to try and find the offender.

• Edited by Gnothe Tuesday, October 29, 2013 10:37 AM Had written drivers instead of services...

• Edited by W8.1 SH8T Friday, November 01, 2013 9:28 PM

Solution----

Had the same problem. Fixed by this.

Open File Explorer somehow by task manager. Enable the "View hidden items" option & uncheck "Hide system files" from view tab. Now go the the drive where the os is installed in my case C drive. You will see a folder named "Windows Activation Technology". Take its ownership and give all its permissions to yourself (user) . Now delete the folder. Run sfc /scannow command again. Reboot. It worked for me!

• Proposed as answer by topeko-yolo Tuesday, November 19, 2013 6:15 AM

I finally solved the last of my issues: that is that the metro apps could not be updated or new installed, and that the ones that were installed were broken.

A summary of successful fixes:

1: Disabling the App readiness service to get rid of the black screen during boot.

2: To take Power over the Control panel and the Store, do this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/notime/archive/2013/10/18/fix-store-app-in-windows-8-1.aspx

3: Follow this one to be able to repair metro apps: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/error-0x80070005-updating-windows-store-apps

4: Try to start each app from the start screen and select the repair option.

5: Back to normal windows functionality!

If to do an RCA, it seems that during the upgrade process the apps did not get the necessary rights. Why? No idea, but at least it works now.

• Edited by Gnothe Friday, November 22, 2013 9:55 AM Didn't work after all.

I had no issues with metro apps or corrupt files, but disabling the App Readiness service eliminated my long desktop load time (aka black screen).

Thanks for the post!

• Marked as answer by Michael_MartinModerator Tuesday, April 22, 2014 4:12 PM

We had a similar problem on our brand new Windows 8/8.1 Dell computers: after the UEFI Dell boot logo we got a black screen for about 5 minutes before we were able to log-on. The system event log listed related time-out error messages for various Windows services (not always the same ones during each reboot).

After extensive testing and troubleshooting it turned-out that Microsoft Forefront Client Security was the culprit.  This Microsoft antivirus tool was automatically deployed through System Center Essentials 2010 and Forefront Protection Server, hence we had to disable this for Windows 8 clients, and revert to the built-in Windows Defender. I assume that  Microsoft Forefront Client Security is not (yet) supported on Windows 8/8.1.

• Edited by Applied Maths NV Monday, January 27, 2014 1:44 PM

• Edited by ghoust1101 Tuesday, March 04, 2014 7:22 AM

Just the kind of results I've grown to expect from a new ms release. End users become beta testers.

• Proposed as answer by Pierre01 Friday, March 07, 2014 9:07 PM
• Unproposed as answer by Pierre01 Friday, March 07, 2014 9:08 PM

• Edited by w7ee Tuesday, April 15, 2014 1:14 PM

all I get is a totally black screen. If I move the mouse the mouse pointer (white arrow) appears for a second or so. 

If you can see a pointer it is a blank screen, not totally black. 

That may be good news.  For example, some find that the OS is inexplicably switching to a phantom monitor and putting the lock screen, Ctrl-Alt-Delete response, etc. there, not where you can see it.

Then what you can try is assuming what your keystrokes are generating and acting as if you could see it.   E.g. in the case of Ctrl-Alt-Delete press End and Enter to launch Task Manager.  Then you could press Alt-Space M and CursorRight.   Then drag it onto the screen you can see.

In these cases, it may help to attach a second monitor and see if your symptom is any clearer that way.   ; )

Good luck

I got the same problems, no key commands seams to get recogniced, booting to a loggon screen. 

Blank or black screen on several different computers, common is intel integrated and ati/amd addon graphics card.

Just tested on 1 computer so far but if i connect a monnitor cable to both cards i get 2 screens and all seams to work, disconnect the integrated card and back to black screen with mouse pointer on boot.

1 other strange thing is when i press the power button on the computer i see the lock screen picture for a sec before the computer shutts off nicely.

all was working fine untill the latest updtates, clearly Microsoft did som changes in them that made it go bad.

All computers i got the error on are older with fresh installs off 8.1, graphic cards are spanned from not supported by win 8 to supported ones but cheep one.

Luckily my monnitor have 2 inputs so i can just have both cards connected and keep working.

I got the same problems, no key commands seams to get recogniced, booting to a loggon screen. 

Blank or black screen on several different computers, common is intel integrated and ati/amd addon graphics card.

Just tested on 1 computer so far but if i connect a monnitor cable to both cards i get 2 screens and all seams to work, disconnect the integrated card and back to black screen with mouse pointer on boot.

1 other strange thing is when i press the power button on the computer i see the lock screen picture for a sec before the computer shutts off nicely.

all was working fine untill the latest updtates, clearly Microsoft did som changes in them that made it go bad.

All computers i got the error on are older with fresh installs off 8.1, graphic cards are spanned from not supported by win 8 to supported ones but cheep one.

Luckily my monitor have 2 inputs so i can just have both cards connected and keep working.

Update: dint work after all, every time i boot to a black screen i power down and remove the vga cable if its connected or connect it if its not and it works on next boot, but next time i power down it boots to black screen again.

fitted a nvidia 610 card instead and now it works every time, anoying when it was working before the updates

• Edited by Tegnestig 20 hours 12 minutes ago update