windows 7 black screen after login, no desktop show up
Hi everybody, I'm having trouble with my windows 7 right now, it's an ultimate version, I just shut it off last night and opened it up this morning. Everything seems to be normal util I loged in to my user. The old things happend after that, only the black screen showed up and an window pop up which shows "my computer" the mouse can be moved regularly.I tried several ways to get it back to normal:reboot.reboot and login to safe mode.change the resolution and multiple monitor settings.uninstall and reinstall the graphic driver.ctrl+alt+del will allow me go to the regular screen which I could go to the task manager, switch user, lock the pc, signoff, change pass word, and reboot or restart etc.I ended the "dwm.exe" in process which would not work.That window seems like the only hope I could access the computer which pop up everytime I reboot.I can use that pop up window to go online and go control panel and all that, I can also runall the programjust like normal.Everythings sames normal besides I cannot get the normal screen, no starup, no destop icons, no quick lunch. I could change my background picture, but I cannot use right click on the background.Does anybody know how to solve this? I really don't want to reinstall the windows again which I just did a week ago.I will appreciate any solution to this problem.
November 19th, 2009 1:09am

Nobody can give some comments or advice?
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November 19th, 2009 2:55am

Hi Perfect710, I noticed that you tried to access Safe Mode. Does the issue occur in Safe Mode? Also, please open Control Panel -> Backup and Restore -> Recover system settings or your computer -> Open System Restore -> follow the wizard to restore the system to the state before the issue occurred. If the issue persists, please perform the steps below to add explorer.exe process. 1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc on the keyboard to bring up Task Manager. 2. Click File -> New Task (Run) 3. Type explorer.exe and then press Enter. Hope this helps. Regards, Linda
November 19th, 2009 11:52am

Hi, yesterday I installed Windows 7 and after a few updates and re-starts I now have the same problem.I have no idea what caused it and how to cure it!I do not want to start explorer manually, each time I logon.Very frustrating.
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November 25th, 2009 9:56am

Linda,As I reported above this works but is not really a cure for the problem.Regards,Marinos.
November 25th, 2009 9:58am

Linda,To answer your question, I get the same issue with Safe Mode!Also I created a new user to see if this was related to the user account but I observed the same thing.Hope this helps.
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November 25th, 2009 10:08am

I have the same issue on my Toshiba NB-205 netbook running Windows 7 Business (Pro?). ON Friday (11/27) it was working fine. Then I got prompted to activate with Microsoft so I did. Then i got this problem with a black screen. It happens whether I'm logging in under my user account or an admin. It happens under safe mode, too. Explorer.exe was missing from the Windows folder so I copied it there from another computer. Still doesn't launch when I login. I checked the registry key and it's sure in there (HKLM\MS\Win NT\WinLogon under the SHELL command)If I login and activate the Task Manager I can manually start Explorer.exe and things seem to be fine but this is hardly a good solution for an OS.What happened to Windows 7 and how do we get this fixed?
December 1st, 2009 2:05am

I have also been getting black screens lately, but not exactly as you describe. Several times the last days I had some explorer window stop responding. When trying to kill it, I get a black screen, and have to use the power button on my computer to restart Windows. When trying to kill the explorer window, I get the option to try to restart explorer (this is what I select), but it don't work. After I try this, everything is black, and nothing works (not even the mouse). I am running Windows 7 Ultimate. In my event viewer, under "System" I now get an error when starting up my pc. "The Power Control [2009/09/11 00:28:09] service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified." Can this have something to do with the problem ? (just trying to provide as much info as possible, so this problem can be resolved).
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December 1st, 2009 2:06pm

I have the same problem on my home machine. I'm getting various incarnations of this problem:* after boot, logging into an account simply shows the accounts background and never goes on.* at the logon screen, if other users are logged on, trying to log into another account claims that there aren't enough resources to log on, which is bogus (4GB machine) and nothing running besides a browser on the other account.Cheers, -MaF (Manuel Fahndrich)
December 1st, 2009 7:19pm

On my Vista 64 home machine I had this black screen also. It started AFTER I tried to do a restore to a previous point. I did the restore because my first indication of an issue was OneCare would not start. I also noted that I can no longer run a command prompt as administrator either. All of this seems related if you read the information from Prevx on the issue. For the record, safe mode appeared to boot fine. But OneCare won't start in safe mode so I couldn't test it. Using the fix from Prevx I was able to get my screen back but the same issue with OneCare now exists. I suspected corrupted files but I now suspect a permission issue. I also noticed that the program Steam from Valve stopped working but I just ignored that until now.
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December 1st, 2009 8:35pm

I am having the same problem from time to time, I couldn't figure out what is causing it to happen so therefore I don't have a reliable repro (I am using Lenovo X61 tablet). My workaround is;1. Boot to Safe mode with networking, then logon with my account to corporate network (this makes it boot and show the desktop in my case)2.Restart and boot normally (which makes the problem go away and make my desktop re-appear)This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
December 1st, 2009 9:02pm

I seem to have the same and perhaps worse. Symptoms don't match exactly, however. Received a patch on Nov 24 or 25. Upon reboot the computer (laptop) has a totally black screen. Not even the bios startup stuff appears. That doesn't seem to match other peoples' symptoms, and I wouldn't expect an O/S patch to be able to prevent the screen from powering up at all during boot.However, the timing is impeccable. Received the patch, let it reboot the computer, and the problem started immediately. I was able to connect a separate monitor and see everything fine. Using the separate monitor, I can find no hint of the problem - other than the laptop screen not powering up.Did a lot of troubleshooting with HP support (system restore, uninstall/reinstall hard drives, a few other simple things, looked around the PC a lot for indications of trouble. After all the the problem still persisted. The laptop screen started working 1-2 days later - don't know why. I did reinstall some non-MS updates to apps after the restore.
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December 1st, 2009 10:43pm

I too experienced the 'Black Screen of Death' on Win7 Pro. What happened isthat my screensaver would kick off, the screen would go black and then would not come back. This happened soon after installing the updates. No matter what I tried the computer would not respond. I installed prevx's fix last night and it seems to have corrected the problem thus far.
December 2nd, 2009 7:14pm

I had a very similar issue to this. I just bought my computer two weeks ago and had this happen the night I set it up. I first happened when I restarted. I called HP and they had me press f8 until the bios menu popped up. I was then able to restore default settings. I had to do it twice form Windows to even boot. It's only happened once since then, and again it was after I restarted. I used the same method to get it going and have been ok since... I'm guessing it is related to all this.
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December 3rd, 2009 6:54am

Win7 ultimate, updates were disabled from day 1 and no malware/virus on the box.What I see is that the LCD lamp is turned of while the screen is on, this is my Black Screen of death. I was able to see what was going on in the screen by lighting the screen with an external lamp I had on my desktop. I noticed the monitor refresh rate was set to 59 Hz instead of 60 Hz which is the normal setting it should have had.My guess is that this is definitely something video related, possibly in the way the monitors are being detected or something like that.Also, there's a very nasty USB bug that prevents my mouse (and I tried 3 different ones) getting detected. From half the times I turn on the PC I need to disconnect and connect again the mouse in order for it to be detected.Both bugs were seen on a desktop and a laptop I own.Cheers
December 3rd, 2009 8:28pm

Linda,I am having the same problem as these other people. Ipurchased a new laptop a few weeks ago and decided to replace the vendor-installed Windows 7 Home Premium x32 with Windows 7 Home Premium x64. I activated the OS at that time. A couple of weeks later, as at least one other person who's commented on their experience, I was then prompted to activate the OS AGAIN! I've never seen this happen before. I decided to use the phone method and was able to activate it. Since my purchasethere have been MSFT updates that I've installed.I'm not saying what is causing the black screen but this has happened to me at least 3 times now. I've always forced the computer off and then rebooted successfully. (I didn't know about the Task Manager trick.)Whether this is a problem introduced by MSFT or not, I would expect MSFT to listen to their customers, believe them, take this seriously, and do something about it (rather than generally telling the world that there isn't a problem). Give us a diagnostic. Try to simulate our experiences. Do something.Jon
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December 3rd, 2009 9:29pm

Add me to the list of the "Black Screen of Death." I have had Windows 7 Home Premium since 10-24-09. I have kept current with Microsoft updates. Yesterday, I experienced the same problem. The computer booted up to the User Account screen. I logged in and at that point the screen turned black. So far, I have only been able to resolve it by logging off through the Control, Alt, Delete keys and restarting the computer. I have a Radeon 1300 video driver if it relates to this problem. Either Windows 7 has a bug or one of the later updates in November created the problem. Microsoft denies the problem is related to these updates. They should investigate the problem again. It can't be ignored. Al
December 4th, 2009 12:50am

This isn't an authoritative answer - I've justhad this problem, sifted through the initial bogus media coverage,found a solution, and started speculating on the real cause.Here's a workaroundfor the problem, though this company mis-diagnosed the problem (it wasn't anACL problem). This fix is opaque and comes from a third party, but it fixed the problem for me:http://www.prevx.com/blog/140/Black-Screen-woes-could-affect-millions-on-Windows--Vista-and-XP.htmlNote their fix is an exe and they don't tell you what it does. I appreciate that they are helping, but they should fully disclose their fix so at least advancedusers can have confidence in their good intentions.Here's a better possible reason for why the problem occurred (a registry key telling Windows which shell to run on login was corrupted - a REG_SZ key was missing a '\0'. Sounds somewhat plausible, but the fishy part is what caused that?):http://www.prevx.com/blog/141/Windows-Black-Screen-Root-Cause.htmlMy symptoms & observations:Iran into this problem on a Win7 laptop that was upgraded from Windows Vista Ultimate. I log in, get a black screen, and Windows never proceeds to setting up my desktop, etc (ie, Windows neverlaunches explorer). Running the fixing tool from Prevx did solve the problem, however their diagnosisfor the cause of the problem was wrong (their initial hypothesis was the ACL's were incorrect and implied Windows Update patches broke it, but that was wrong. They followed up with the non-null-terminated string hypothesis). Before running Prevx's tool, the registry key existed, RegEdit visually displayed the expected value (explorer.exe), and the ACL's were fine. Yet, of course, I couldn't successfully log in. My pure speculation about the cause:So if the missing '\0' hypothesis is correct, and if the Prevx tool deletes & recreates the value in the registry key, obviously that should fix the problem. (FYI - look at the MSDN docs for RegSetValueEx for a note about thelpData parameter needing a '\0'.) But that doesn't explain how the value got messed up in the first place- I don't go around removing terminating zeros from REG_SZ values for funnor profit. Sounds like either random corruption, or more likely, something wanted to run something whenWindows boots then incorrectly undid their change to the registry. I saw that some MS security folkssuggested this could be caused by malware (http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2009/12/01/reports-of-issues-with-november-security-updates.aspx). Operating under that hypothesis, I ran Forefront on Wednesday using the current signatures, but it didn't report anything. That may not spota novel virus or rootkit, of course.Another wild guess - perhaps the act of installing certain classes of patches could cause the problem, due to a (hypothetical) bug in Windows Update. Windows Update does something on boot up to configure patches, and it looks like this happens after login but before Explorer is running. Perhaps Windows Update itself could be editing this registry key to replace the shell with anotherprogram that configures patches (or options to explorer.exe?), then replaces the registry key again to point back to explorer after patches have been installed? If that's how it works (which is a big guess), then maybe when WU restores the registry key value to explorer.exe, it doesn't reset this reg keyappropriately on Win7. Of course, I would have expect to see a bad value for this reg key in RegEdit if this were the case. I didn't - perhaps there were some unprintable characters in the string, or I've empirically shot down my own wild guess. Note - my problem occurred ona Windows 7 Ultimate machine that was upgraded from Vista Ultimate. Perhaps something during upgrade may have introduced some registry corruption that didn't show up until another value in the registry was changed later? BTW, to confirm the fix & narrow downthis fix, perhaps someone w/ a broken machine can reboot into Safe Mode, run RegEdit, delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell then recreate the Shell key as a REG_SZ key, with the value explorer.exe. If that works, thatcould helpconfirm the cause and allow us to give standalone instructions for a fix that we can have more confidence in (as opposed to telling people to run anexe from a third party).
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December 4th, 2009 1:58pm

I had the issue after a clean install of Win7 Enterprise. I could not get the system to boot into Win7 normally. The system would go to a black screen following the password entry. I could get into safe mode and was able to recreate the Shell key. Next reboot, I could get back into Win7. However, my wireless Microsoft mouse and keyboard have stopped working. I may be forced to reboot and if I recall, this it what started my problems initially. May be a USB / motherboard driver update?Dan Luciano - Sr. Consultant MCP, MCTS WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 Configuration WSS 3.0 Applicaton Development
December 6th, 2009 10:14am

Try these steps arid47, Restart your PC and press F8 durring the startup. When you get options chose Safe Mode. ClickStart, click Control Panel, click System and Security, and then, under System, click Device Manager.In the list of hardware categories, expand the Display adapters category. Right click on your display adapter and click Disable.Restart the PC normally. See if you can now get to your desktop. If that works you are working with a video issue. If not there are other steps you can try.
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December 8th, 2009 10:19am

Raleej3, thanks for the suggestion. Lately, it has stopped. The black screen happened twice last week. I will, however, keep a record of your advice for future useshould I encounter the problem again.
December 9th, 2009 7:57am

i haveing same issuee in all mode of windows 7 ultimate version, i try to run explore manualy but it also not open an task manger get crash
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December 27th, 2009 1:13pm

that prv fix the problem in my save mode but not able to fix in my normal mode as i not able to brows or run anyhing, when i try task manger to open file it crash
December 27th, 2009 2:32pm

i try to delete the registery key and did as u said but not work
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December 27th, 2009 4:30pm

Entering exploror.exe completely solved the issue I was having, whch was exactly identical to that of Perfect's, and I have windows vista basic. Thank you, so much!
December 31st, 2009 1:27am

I experienced this problem today after installing an application called "Neatscan to Office 1.0". The program appeared to install correctly and documents could be scanned into Office 2007 programs.Upon reboot I encountered the "Black Screen" along with the message "The procedure entry point DwmHintDxUpdate could not be located in the dynamic link library USER32.dll." Attempting to manually start explorer.exe was unsuccessful.System restore to a point a couple of hours before the install, fortunately, corrected the problem.Watch what you are installing. Neatscan claims Vista compatibility, but does not appear to want to play nice with Win7.System Info: Dell Latitude E6400, Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit.
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January 27th, 2010 1:32am

I'm on Windows 7 Ultimate, a brand new install (not an upgrade).There was a lot of "press" online, even from reputable technical sources, around this past Thanksgiving about prevx's claim and that it was a hoax and maybe even dangerous. I held off for a couple of weeks, hoping to see Microsoft come out with some sort of statement acknowledging that our experiences were real and at least begin working on a solution. I never saw one.I eventually decided to repeat what Brian had discovered and done, running the prevx.com fix (http://www.prevx.com/blog/140/Black-Screen-woes-could-affect-millions-on-Windows--Vista-and-XP.html). I haven't had the problem since and it's been almost two months. Based on this, I recommend others try it too.My thanks to Brian's experiment and recommendation. With Brian's link from Microsoft posted here, I had reasonable confidence I wouldn't mess my system up.Jon
January 28th, 2010 10:43pm

Hey guys if you guys have that problem let try what i wrote right here it's may be fixed *-* if you have the windows 7 installation disk, you can use it to fix this one *-* if No, you have to find one and burn it to CD or DVD depend on the size of the installation disk. And one more thing you can find it on google or go to disk wep thepiratebay.org and type on the search is WINDOWS 7 or some think like that. *-* after you found one let just burn it into a DVD or CD or you can use your USB flash driver to install them if you know how to do it 1- When you got the windows installation DVD let go head and push it in and reboot you computer. 2- When the Bios screen came up go head and hit F8 to go into boot option. and you can boot form your DVD ( Just like when you install the windows. No deferent.) 3- When you came up with the Install screen and look down to the left bottom you should see the repair option. 4- Now go head and hit on it you will abel to fix your computer now 5- And now you just wait for it load up and when it came up option ( i don't remember the name ) but you can say that they tell you to boot form the Back up image or some like that and you don't have to do it or can say that you can't do it because you didn't make one images. and now you go head hit cancel and they will take you to the other option. 6- Now it's important step -- you find the option called restore system or system restore -- DO NOT HIT ON = WINDOWS COMPLETE PC RESTORE = 7- And now you can run the system restore to restore your computer. and remember to choose the right option or date that you wanted to restore( it gonna be the date that you know you have the trouble with the black screen. now it finish and reboot you computer. now just with for it done and your computer is fixed GOOD LUCK if you have some question let email me at -- takemi_2urheart@yahoo.com
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January 29th, 2010 9:31pm

I had the same problem, until a few minutes ago. My problem was that I had a NAS box set up on my local network, and 3 drives mounted and mapped the the Windows machine. I was getting ready to reinstall, when I tried rebooting the machine without networking in safemode. The NAS was responding to a certain point, don't know which, didn't care, rebooted it (It was a QNAP Turbo NAS 219P) Then tried again, now that Windows didn't try to map the drive, explorer worked once more! Problem: Windows explorer was trying to mount these and map them, but timed out a dozen times or so, ending in a malfunctioning explorer. Test: Pull out ethernet, or turn off router before login, see if it helps, if it does, use fix. If it doesn't, this was not the issue and I cannot help. Fix: Restart whatever machine you've got mapped to your machine, or turn it off, it's gotta need some repair.
January 31st, 2010 12:07am

Hi everybody, I'm having trouble with my windows 7 right now, it's an ultimate version, I just shut it off last night and opened it up this morning. Everything seems to be normal util I loged in to my user. The old things happend after that, only the black screen showed up and an window pop up which shows "my computer" the mouse can be moved regularly.I tried several ways to get it back to normal:reboot.reboot and login to safe mode.change the resolution and multiple monitor settings.uninstall and reinstall the graphic driver.ctrl+alt+del will allow me go to the regular screen which I could go to the task manager, switch user, lock the pc, signoff, change pass word, and reboot or restart etc.I ended the "dwm.exe" in process which would not work.That window seems like the only hope I could access the computer which pop up everytime I reboot.I can use that pop up window to go online and go control panel and all that, I can also run all the program just like normal. Everythings sames normal besides I cannot get the normal screen, no starup, no destop icons, no quick lunch. I could change my background picture, but I cannot use right click on the background.Does anybody know how to solve this? I really don't want to reinstall the windows again which I just did a week ago.I will appreciate any solution to this problem. CTR+ALT+DEL then go to task manager then new task then type in explorer.exe then it works. Got it from someone else down below i tried it and now it works. It did that because i accidently ended the process in task manager. I thought i had a virus but i didnt
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January 31st, 2010 3:12am

I fixed this issue, I too had the same problem. Here is how I did it. 1) Reboot and press F8 2) Select "Repair my computer" 3) Select the keyboard layout and lanugage 4) When you reach system recovery tools, select System restore. 5) Select the restore point when it was working fine and restart the computer. That's it.... If you do not have the system restore points, try startup repair.
January 31st, 2010 6:11pm

Im Glad many of you have had your problems solved, but i realize its the same problem with different extents of which mine seems to be the worst.. i have tried everything in this forum and others, none have worked. I like many other users am running windows 7 ultimate, explorer.exe is crashing and so is task manager so i am unable to start the process manually. even the ease of access icon on the left crashes(utilman.exe). i tried a system restore, didnt work, repairs: same and im pretty sure its not a graphics issue since the windows 7 screen comes up just fine when i press ctrl+alt+del. is there any update on this issue? i really need help!!
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February 3rd, 2010 10:01am

Hi, Brian et al. The pic is of a REG_SZ value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell prior to editting it. Clearly, we are dealing with a zero-terminated WCHAR string with no exotic characters within. Yet I had to improvise in order to get that particular session started.
February 13th, 2010 12:31pm

FYI I have this problem as well. It ONLY occurs when I boot my PC with a Blu-Ray disc in the drive (I haven't tried a standard DVD). If I boot the PC w/o a Blu-Ray disc in the drive it boots fine. I ran the Black Screen fix on prevx website but no luck. For me the Blu-Ray disc is the x-factor. Just not sure how to fix, other than to boot w/o.
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February 14th, 2010 10:02pm

Same problem here. Booting PC will stop before the login screen appears, only black background and the mousepointer are visible. This started to occur a few days ago, having nothing installed or downloaded that could be the cause. What I had done was plugging the power cord into an external USB HD while Win7 was up and running. At this moment, when this external drive is powered on while booting Win7 I get the blacks screen. When I switch the external UB HD off and I reboot Win7 starts as it should do. And when I switch the device back on, after the reboot, Win7 keeps running fine and the device is accessible as it should be.
February 18th, 2010 12:19pm

Since this thread is currently the top search result for Windows 7 Black Screen in Google, wanted to post one other solution I recently came across that was completely different than anything listed so far. Had the usual symptoms - Windows 7, could log in, then black screen with only the mouse pointer. Sometimes I could hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the task manager, other times even that wasn't working. Had recently installed some updates and a new video driver, which was a total red herring because I spent time trying to undo those changes. Tried a system restore, checked the registry as outlined in this thread, and a few other things. Was almost ready to chuck it all and restore from backup when I tried using another computer to go to my Windows Home Server and get some software. Turns out the WHS was responding to pings, but was not accepting any network connections. Since my black screen computer had several things redirected there (Documents, Pictures, some libraries), it apparently was causing the hang during boot. Another symptom I discovered late in the game was that eventually (10-12 mins) the black screen system would finally pick up and continue the logon like nothing had happened. Anyway, I'm assuming something similar could happen for any network system that is not able to get to its shares on a hosted server. After a reset of the WHS system (and it had apparently hung after installing some Microsoft updates) everything was humming along again. Hope that helps.
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February 22nd, 2010 10:02pm

I've been seeing three similar issues. In all cases, the screen remain is black:1. Switch User is extremely slow2. Once the display is powered off (controlled by Power Options), it takes several minutes for the display to turn back on3. Resume after sleep sometimes requires a reset because the display remains black even though I can hear the hard drive runningJim__A's reply got me thinking. I recently created a network share on the problem computer. Once I removed the share, switch user became fast again. I haven't tested #2 or #3 yet though.
February 23rd, 2010 2:59am

Just tried the F8->Repair my computer -> System restore process. No joy. Still get the patented Windows Black Screen of Death upon login. I have two pcs currently exhibiting this problem. Can't get a bit of work done on either machine. Nothing in the event logs, no guidance from Microsoft (beyond the customary, "It's not our fault!" denials). Meanwhile, my Ubuntu Linux machine (upon which I'm writing this message) continues to hum along happily. I can't be sure, but I believe that with the advent of this problem, Bill Gates has now wasted more of my life than did my ex-wife. Perhaps it's well past time that I applied the same solution to Microsoft that worked so well in her case...
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February 23rd, 2010 3:28am

Thanks a lot!!! :)Tried the key delete/recreate, now even my SAFE MODE has it, only diff is the safe mode comes up with my computer showing. Safe mode worked fine b4.
February 25th, 2010 8:11am

After trying most all of the proposed solutions, none of which worked, on a whim I deleted the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell key and bingo, system booted back to normal.
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February 25th, 2010 8:28am

I've been seeing three similar issues. In all cases, the screen remain is black: 1. Switch User is extremely slow 2. Once the display is powered off (controlled by Power Options), it takes several minutes for the display to turn back on 3. Resume after sleep sometimes requires a reset because the display remains black even though I can hear the hard drive running Jim__A's reply got me thinking. I recently created a network share on the problem computer. Once I removed the share, switch user became fast again. I haven't tested #2 or #3 yet though. For what it is worth, I experienced the same slowdown on switching users and loging in... thought I had the Black Screen of Death... After about 7 minutes, the desktop would come up normally. All of this started after mapping network drives. Once the mappings were deleted, the laptop went back to its very quick boot sequence. What I've done is to set up BAT files to map all of my network drives via NET USE statements (see MS Help for Syntax) and to delete all mappings... Shouldn't have to do it this way, but it does solve the issue.
March 7th, 2010 8:49am

USE Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware MY PC Just Did This an i use this program an it cured it all it is u got a spyware backdoor worm an it made it go black or blue
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March 27th, 2010 5:14am

the soluton posted by brian from the prevx website (link: http://www.prevx.com/blog/140/Black-Screen-woes-could-affect-millions-on-Windows--Vista-and-XP.html) is working fine 4 me. any 1 who has the same problem do read the instructions before following the instructions :)
April 4th, 2010 7:16pm

For what it is worth, I experienced the same slowdown on switching users and loging in... thought I had the Black Screen of Death... After about 7 minutes, the desktop would come up normally. All of this started after mapping network drives. Once the mappings were deleted, the laptop went back to its very quick boot sequence. What I've done is to set up BAT files to map all of my network drives via NET USE statements (see MS Help for Syntax) and to delete all mappings... Shouldn't have to do it this way, but it does solve the issue. I have same problem. All of this started after mapping network drives. ALways works fine after I go to safemode and disconnect network drives, then dont have black screen anymore. And I find also its very slow to use that drives. I mean I use same drive via XP and win7. Xp its much more faster than 7. Is there any solution for this? I dont want map that drives everytime I login and disconnect every time I logout. And that speed is also very weird like those folder lag. Thanks. MZ
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April 12th, 2010 1:35pm

This post is mainly for future people who have this problem who come here . This site page is the first on the search engine, so i think its necessary. Problem : Yesterday i installed RegCure to fix my registry because i was having problems with something else unrelated, and in the end it didnt work. After it fixed the registry, and i still continued on with my normal computer usage, i never had to turn it off until late at night before going to bed (unrelated). The problem was, that the program changed something in the registry, and screwed everything up, and only found out about the problems this after noon when i tried to turn it on. Rebooting didnt help at all either. Symptoms : Computer turns on like normal, i see the windows 7 bootloading screen like normal, and then when it gets to the welcome screen, all i see is the mouse cursor, and everything is just a black screen of death. Can move mouse. Cannot open task manager or ANYTHING else. Exact same symptoms with all the safe modes. Fix : Well, i read most of the posts here, all say to get a program .exe, prevx or something to fix it. But how can you run a program when you cant even start the operating system right? So what i did, and probably the easiest fix i have ever done, was pop in the Windows 7 CD , booted from it , went to Repair My Computer , and very easily went to System Restore , and restored my computer to the last windows update which was yesterday in the morning, which was great because that was also before i installed RegCure, which was the source of the problems. Windows loads up exactly perfectly to how i had it. Hope this helps someone out there.
April 21st, 2010 9:38pm

Hi everybody, I'm having trouble with my windows 7 right now, it's an ultimate version, I just shut it off last night and opened it up this morning. Everything seems to be normal util I loged in to my user. The old things happend after that, only the black screen showed up and an window pop up which shows "my computer" the mouse can be moved regularly. I tried several ways to get it back to normal: reboot. reboot and login to safe mode. change the resolution and multiple monitor settings. uninstall and reinstall the graphic driver. ctrl+alt+del will allow me go to the regular screen which I could go to the task manager, switch user, lock the pc, signoff, change pass word, and reboot or restart etc. I ended the "dwm.exe" in process which would not work. That window seems like the only hope I could access the computer which pop up everytime I reboot. I can use that pop up window to go online and go control panel and all that, I can also run all the program just like normal. Everythings sames normal besides I cannot get the normal screen, no starup, no destop icons, no quick lunch. I could change my background picture, but I cannot use right click on the background. Does anybody know how to solve this? I really don't want to reinstall the windows again which I just did a week ago. I will appreciate any solution to this problem. I've had similar problems after 'normal' boot-up. Getting the blue 'Welcome' screen, then a black screen with the (moveable) mouse pointer, but nothing else. Emergency reboot is the only option. Sometimes during a reboot, my taskbar comes through, but only partly, giving a 'process hangs' message after a couple of minutes, but nothing happens... I must say I have Windows 7 Ultimate, with 5 internal Hard Drives, one external HD and 2 Lite-On DVD Multi burners. Funny thing is that my PC boots normally after I disconnect one or more hard drives. The black screen only started to happen after some updates, but I haven't got a clue which ones. But like I said, when I disconnect one or more drives, I can boot normally (no log-on issues, because I deactivated UAC: as the sole user I don't need it). During one particular boot-up, I had the "start windows with a lower screen resolution" option (or something in that order), which also made my PC start without the black screen ocurring... but that option was only shown once... Seems that it could be a memory issue, which makes that explorer isn't able to load the desktop/taskbar. Specs: Win7 Ultimate 32-Bits/Asus Maximus III Gene/i860/ 2x2GB Kingston HyperX@1333MHz/Sapphire Radeon HD5770 VaporX in CrossFire/Antec TPQ 850Watt/Antec 1200 chassis
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April 23rd, 2010 3:10pm

I'm getting a black screen with only the pointer which moves as I move my mouse. Ctrl-alt-delete does not work. This started happening yesterday after I got a window that said that AVG had updated and needed to restart the computer....which I did. Black screen after that. I can run in safe mode and from there have run virus and malware scans which come up as 0. I restored to a point a couple of days back...didn't fix it. So I deleted AVG to see if that would do it...nope. I have booted from the Windows disc and run both the recovery tool and memory diagnostic tool...both say everything is fine. I tried the prevx.com fix which did nothing. Hmm I think that's all I've tried. I don't know what else to do except a reformat and I'm not finding info on the internet on how to do that for Windows 7 while in safe mode. I'm willing to reformat at this point if I can find out how to do it. I tried start -> right click computer -> manage-> left click disc management-> right click C: .....and format is grayed out :\ This is driving me nuts...can someone please help?
April 25th, 2010 7:51am

I'm getting a black screen with only the pointer which moves as I move my mouse. Ctrl-alt-delete does not work. This started happening yesterday after I got a window that said that AVG had updated and needed to restart the computer....which I did. Black screen after that. I can run in safe mode and from there have run virus and malware scans which come up as 0. I restored to a point a couple of days back...didn't fix it. So I deleted AVG to see if that would do it...nope. I have booted from the Windows disc and run both the recovery tool and memory diagnostic tool...both say everything is fine. I tried the prevx.com fix which did nothing. Hmm I think that's all I've tried. I don't know what else to do except a reformat and I'm not finding info on the internet on how to do that for Windows 7 while in safe mode. I'm willing to reformat at this point if I can find out how to do it. I tried start -> right click computer -> manage-> left click disc management-> right click C: .....and format is grayed out :\ This is driving me nuts...can someone please help? Try what I did. I had to disconnect at least one sata/hard drive of the 5 (seven if you count both burners) and my machine booted normally. After the PC boots, simply reconnect the discs (only when they're S-ATA drives. Never connect P-ATA molex powerplugs when your PC is running) and perform a "rescan disks" (start/all programs/administrative tools/computer management/disk management. Then hit "Action" in the top toolbar... When windows has found the re-attatced disk(s) import them by righ-clicking on the graph-bar of the said disks and choosing "import foreign disk". Should you choose to 'reformat', that's something that you'll have to do while re-installing Windows. You can't format the drive where your operating system is on while the PC is running. That's like trying to lift a lid while standing on it. Go into your BIOS and change the boot-sequence of your drives, from the c-drive to your CD/DVD-ROM. Put your Windows disk in the ROM drive and reboot. You'll get a message "hit any button if you want to boot from DVD" and do so. Then after Windows has gathered its information for a re-install, DO NOT install windows in the same folder/on the same partition it was before, but delete your C-partition and Windows will re-format your drive, before starting the installation. Should you have more partitions on that same drive, don't be alarmed: they won't be touched. Just remember to make back-ups of the files you want to keep (and do so with hidden folders included if you want to save firefox booklmarks and/or .pst files from Outlook). Open 'explorer' and in the top toolbar hit 'tools/folder options'. The hit the 'view' tab and go through the list to find "show hidden files and folders" and untick "hide protected operating system files". Should that toolbar at the top not be there, hit "Organize/folder and search options"...
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April 26th, 2010 6:33am

Hi everybody, I'm having trouble with my windows 7 right now, it's an ultimate version, I just shut it off last night and opened it up this morning. Everything seems to be normal util I loged in to my user. The old things happend after that, only the black screen showed up and an window pop up which shows "my computer" the mouse can be moved regularly. I tried several ways to get it back to normal: reboot. reboot and login to safe mode. change the resolution and multiple monitor settings. uninstall and reinstall the graphic driver. ctrl+alt+del will allow me go to the regular screen which I could go to the task manager, switch user, lock the pc, signoff, change pass word, and reboot or restart etc. I ended the "dwm.exe" in process which would not work. That window seems like the only hope I could access the computer which pop up everytime I reboot. I can use that pop up window to go online and go control panel and all that, I can also run all the program just like normal. Everythings sames normal besides I cannot get the normal screen, no starup, no destop icons, no quick lunch. I could change my background picture, but I cannot use right click on the background. Does anybody know how to solve this? I really don't want to reinstall the windows again which I just did a week ago. I will appreciate any solution to this problem. Was having a similar problem on my Dell Laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium. Problem started occurring after some Windows updates (don't know which one exactly). After the login screen I would get a black screen with just the mouse pointer. Could not access Task Manager or anything else. The computer would start up in Safe Mode, but none of the repair options helped, including System Restore. So I tried Brian's suggestion of starting up in Safe Mode, using regedit to delete the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell entry, then manually re-entering the registry key. Now my computer starts up normally again. Just make sure to backup your registry first, just in case. I only implemented this suggestion about 30 minutes ago, but I've restarted my machine multiple times so I'm pretty sure this is a solid fix action. Hope this helps. Jeff
April 30th, 2010 12:07am

I have the same problem but im able to start programs through the task manager. im still tring to figure this out
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April 30th, 2010 9:10pm

I also experienced this. The last thing I did to my computer the matches with anything that is mention here was mapping a drive to a SharePoint site. I then had the issue with black screen after login with mouse and the ability to use task manager. I disconnected the mapped drive (through regedit Export registry dialog, was able to see the drive, right-click and disconnect), but that did not fix the issue. Only after deleting/recreating the Shell value in the registry as discussed else where in this thread was I able to get the desktop back. I am using Windows 7 64bit Ultimate.
May 2nd, 2010 3:21am

Same problem here although I was sure it was a virus. I had clicked an exe file when the file disappeared. Scans showed everything clean. When I rebooted I had the black screen. Tried the Prevx fix and it would only reboot successfully once. Tried the registry fix with same results. I scanned again with Malwarebytes and Microsoft Security Essentials with nothing found. Finally decided to do a Repair-Install. That went fine but still had the black screen. Then I ran Malwarebytes again and it found trojan.delf on my C drive. Removed that and rebooted with another black screen. Ran the Prevx fix and this time it fixed it. Spent a lot of time with this one so hopefully this will help someone else. Win 7 Home Premium 32 bit.
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May 3rd, 2010 2:22am

I feel obligated to report that I did have a Windows 7 Ultimate machine that was suffering from the "black desktop" with no icons or pearl and an explorer window with My Computer and the like. Having read through this forum, I came across the option to delete the key (in Safe Mode) HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell then recreate the Shell key as a REG_SZ key with the value explorer.exe and this CORRECTED the problem. After rebooting, the desktop had been restored.
May 5th, 2010 6:12am

Same exact problem with the regcure thing.. But my problem is I bought the already built computer so I don't have the disc any idea how I might fix it? I have to go on my iPhone for this :'(
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May 6th, 2010 1:56am

This post is mainly for future people who have this problem who come here . This site page is the first on the search engine, so i think its necessary. Problem : Yesterday i installed RegCure to fix my registry because i was having problems with something else unrelated, and in the end it didnt work. After it fixed the registry, and i still continued on with my normal computer usage, i never had to turn it off until late at night before going to bed (unrelated). The problem was, that the program changed something in the registry, and screwed everything up, and only found out about the problems this after noon when i tried to turn it on. Rebooting didnt help at all either. Symptoms : Computer turns on like normal, i see the windows 7 bootloading screen like normal, and then when it gets to the welcome screen, all i see is the mouse cursor, and everything is just a black screen of death. Can move mouse. Cannot open task manager or ANYTHING else. Exact same symptoms with all the safe modes. Fix : Well, i read most of the posts here, all say to get a program .exe, prevx or something to fix it. But how can you run a program when you cant even start the operating system right? So what i did, and probably the easiest fix i have ever done, was pop in the Windows 7 CD , booted from it , went to Repair My Computer , and very easily went to System Restore , and restored my computer to the last windows update which was yesterday in the morning, which was great because that was also before i installed RegCure, which was the source of the problems. Same exact problem with the regcure thing.. But my problem is I bought the already built computer so I don't have the disc any idea how I might fix it? I have to go on my iPhone for this :'( Windows loads up exactly perfectly to how i had it. Hope this helps someone out there.
May 6th, 2010 2:01am

Had the same problem on my domain account. Somethimes a reboot helped then after a certain point no more. BUT, login into a local account worked allways to my suprise! The fix was as simple as stupid as previously mentioned: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell then recreate the Shell key as a REG_SZ key Like: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] "Shell"="explorer.exe"
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May 7th, 2010 2:34pm

I tried the 3rd party fix -- unfortunately no luck. I also took a look at the Shell key... it already had the settings you mentioned. Any other suggestions???
May 10th, 2010 1:00am

Hi, Having a similar problem. I never used multiple user accounts in Windows 7, until my wife started screwing up my work. I set up accounts for her and my daughter. Since I did that, I also set my Windows 7, 64 bit screensaver to wake up on the login screen. Seemed to be fine, but twice now, upon moving my mouse to wake up the PC, I got blackscreens. I can move the mouse pointer, but nothing else works, not even CTRL-ALT-DEL. Every so often the blue wheel spins on the pointer. I have to shut down via power button to fix it. Is this the same issue?
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May 10th, 2010 8:12am

same thing on lenovo t400 win7 ultimate x64, no clue what caused it. one of my users just brought it over. log on results in black screen. you can hover with the mouse but nothing appears on screen. how to fix: press ctrl + alt + dell start task manager click file \ new task type regedit navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\ on the right pane right click shell and delete it recreate it : right click in the left pane on winlogon\ new string name it shell and edit its value to explorer.exe close regedit press ctrl+alt+del logoff press the (red) off botton down on the right of the welcome screen to shut down reboot and all is normal
May 10th, 2010 2:36pm

Roy, It is unclear if you were answering me...does your fix work for my specific case? Any downside to trying it? Thanks
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May 10th, 2010 11:36pm

Steve, i think it is different issue, What was described in most of this post is black screen after login, you describe black screen on waking from sleep and you say ctrl+alt+del doesnt work, that is not the case i managed to fix using the info in this thread. no downside in trying as long as you dont delete any other keys in the registry. however if rebbot always fix you problem i dont think this will help, sound more like waking up issues ;)
May 11th, 2010 10:05am

Thanks Roy...it maybe a smilar issue, as I never had the wake problem prior to requiring login upon wakeup. I did the fix and so far have not had the problem , but it is too early to declare it fixed.
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May 11th, 2010 1:20pm

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del>task manager>file>new task type in explorer and press OK
May 21st, 2010 12:22am

I have your solution, it is registy problem, boot up your pc, When it stops at the black screen with my documents open hit cntr+alt+delete and then task manager Run a new task called regedit Now in the left hand collum navigate to HKEY_local machine/software/microsoft/WindowsNT/Currentversion/winlogon. Click on the winlogon folder Now in the right hand panel click on shell. The data value should only be explorer.exe so delete anything after that, Do this by double clicking on shell and edit the value and hit ok Restart and thats it!
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June 5th, 2010 7:08pm

Hi Hi, This works, however every time you start up, you need to run a new task and explorer. Try this I got it from Microsoft and it worked great on my PC. I have your solution, it is registy problem, boot up your pc, When it stops at the black screen with my documents open hit cntr+alt+delete and then task manager Run a new task called regedit Now in the left hand collum navigate to HKEY_local machine/software/microsoft/WindowsNT/Currentversion/winlogon. Click on the winlogon folder Now in the right hand panel click on shell. The data value should only be explorer.exe so delete anything after that, Do this by double clicking on shell and edit the value and hit ok Restart and thats it!
June 5th, 2010 7:10pm

Hi everybody, I'm having trouble with my windows 7 right now, it's an ultimate version, I just shut it off last night and opened it up this morning. Everything seems to be normal util I loged in to my user. The old things happend after that, only the black screen showed up and an window pop up which shows "my computer" the mouse can be moved regularly. I tried several ways to get it back to normal: reboot. reboot and login to safe mode. change the resolution and multiple monitor settings. uninstall and reinstall the graphic driver. ctrl+alt+del will allow me go to the regular screen which I could go to the task manager, switch user, lock the pc, signoff, change pass word, and reboot or restart etc. I ended the "dwm.exe" in process which would not work. That window seems like the only hope I could access the computer which pop up everytime I reboot. I can use that pop up window to go online and go control panel and all that, I can also run all the program just like normal. Everythings sames normal besides I cannot get the normal screen, no starup, no destop icons, no quick lunch. I could change my background picture, but I cannot use right click on the background. Does anybody know how to solve this? I really don't want to reinstall the windows again which I just did a week ago. I will appreciate any solution to this problem. Dont know if it has been solved but I had the same problem and this is what I found. 1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc on the keyboard to bring up Task Manager. 2. Click File -> New Task (Run…) 3. Type explorer.exe and then press Enter 4. Download Malewarebytes do a quick scan, you will probably find a file named hjkshell.dll or something like that 5. Clean that and you should be good
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June 6th, 2010 12:31am

Hi, This works, however every time you start up, you need to run a new task and explorer. Try this I got it from Microsoft and it worked great on my PC. I have your solution, it is a registy problem. Boot up your pc, When it stops at the black screen with my documents open hit cntr+alt+delete and then task manager Run a new task called regedit Now in the left hand collum navigate to HKEY_local machine/software/microsoft/WindowsNT/Currentversion/winlogon. Click on the winlogon folder Now in the right hand panel click on shell. The data value should only be explorer.exe so delete anything after that, Do this by double clicking on shell and edit the value and hit ok Restart and thats it!
June 7th, 2010 1:26pm

i have just found a work around to my Black Screen of Death, mine use to occur within a few minutes of booting up, it was a new machine and a brand new install, the problem for me is down to the current Nvidia drivers for my 2x XFX GeForce 9600GSO runing in SLI not being able to cope with the Windows 7 Areo theme. Took me ages to find the root cause, check every piece of hardware including monitors and every driver, placed calls with Microsoft and the Card Supplier, but by just selecting "The Basic Theme" in the display panel the problem went away, happy days. If you are having a Black Screen issue and its not happening in Safe Mode its got to be a driver issue, from safe mode, try selecting Basic Theme and see if it works for you.i'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
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June 8th, 2010 11:35am

i had this problem recently on 2 IBM thinkpads.. turns out it was Silverlight that was causing the issue, specifically a recent security update to silverlight (KB982926). uninstalling silverlight fixed it for me. I realize that some of these posts are older and probably dont relate to the silverlight issue but if anyone is recently having this problem with Windows 7, try it.
June 10th, 2010 10:15pm

OK, woke up this morning (06/12/2010), login to my PC, and got This is not a authenic version of Microsoft Windows. I had to restart my PC and take it back a week to get my desktop back, and had to re authenicate it too. As well as when I had gotten it back up Windows Defender and Firewall were shut off, also Security Essenentials was removed (deleted) from my computer. Anyone else had this occur to them? I ran an online scanner to check for viruses, trojans, and spyware there isn't any on my system.
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June 12th, 2010 4:59pm

Since this thread is currently the top search result for Windows 7 Black Screen in Google, wanted to post one other solution I recently came across that was completely different than anything listed so far. Had the usual symptoms - Windows 7, could log in, then black screen with only the mouse pointer. Sometimes I could hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the task manager, other times even that wasn't working. Had recently installed some updates and a new video driver, which was a total red herring because I spent time trying to undo those changes. Tried a system restore, checked the registry as outlined in this thread, and a few other things. Was almost ready to chuck it all and restore from backup when I tried using another computer to go to my Windows Home Server and get some software. Turns out the WHS was responding to pings, but was not accepting any network connections. Since my black screen computer had several things redirected there (Documents, Pictures, some libraries), it apparently was causing the hang during boot. Another symptom I discovered late in the game was that eventually (10-12 mins) the black screen system would finally pick up and continue the logon like nothing had happened. Anyway, I'm assuming something similar could happen for any network system that is not able to get to its shares on a hosted server. After a reset of the WHS system (and it had apparently hung after installing some Microsoft updates) everything was humming along again. Hope that helps. Jim, you are a life saver. I was going insane trying every other solution proposed - sure enough, this was it. I never imagined a WHS crash would stop my main PC from booting properly. Thanks!
June 25th, 2010 7:26pm

I had the same symptoms as some here. Windows 7 Ultimate x64 black screen when logging in as administrator and could not login as unprivileged users at all. The mouse is displayed and can be moved. ctrl-alt-del and running explorer from the task manager gets the login to complete. The problem was a trojan which altered HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit in order to try and load a malicious program. The hacker messed up though and garbled the data with an invalid path so userinit.exe wasn't being loaded at all. Correcting the key so it read c:\windows\system32\userinit.exe resolved the problem. In general the black screen means there has been a foul up before explorer.exe gets called. I ran four anti-spyware/virus programs and non-noticed the key was altered. Matthew
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June 27th, 2010 2:12am

Hi All,I faced a similar issue when MSVBVM50.dll(Visual Basic runtime dll) went missing.My desktop got blacked out after loggin in.I tried installing the missing dll but no gain. I used the fix from Prevx and it works.Thanks Brian
June 28th, 2010 5:50am

I am testing the registry adjustment. What I have noticed, is that if I leave my computer alone, sometimes for many hours after the blackscreen with no mouse appears it fixes itself. usually if I try to access it in the morning and it doesn't work I just turn off my monitor and go to work, but my lunchtime everything is normal again, so I think it has to do somewhat with a stuck process.
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June 28th, 2010 3:49pm

Just to let you know, replacing the Shell Key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell) with "explorer.exe" (no quotes) did work for me. The original entry had both explorer.exe and logon.exe. I too trawled through numerous pages, my symptoms were; in both Safe Mode and Normal, after logging in, I was presented with a cursor and the users documents folder. Only by bringing up the taskmanager and running "explorer" would enable everything to run as normal, and the desktop icons and start menu to reappear. It would be wise to note that the Laptop was infected with various nasties, and woefully behind on Windows Updates. It helps if you can virus scan the hard drive using another machine.
July 1st, 2010 4:44am

i just got it myself, and i left it on whilst i figured out a way to fix it on my laptop. maybe just try leaving it on for a few minutes and see if it loads, because it just took a fair bit of time for the entire process of the system restore to take place i guess. considering thats what it said to me. hope this helps.
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July 4th, 2010 8:43pm

Since this thread is currently the top search result for Windows 7 Black Screen in Google, wanted to post one other solution I recently came across that was completely different than anything listed so far. Had the usual symptoms - Windows 7, could log in, then black screen with only the mouse pointer. Sometimes I could hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the task manager, other times even that wasn't working. Had recently installed some updates and a new video driver, which was a total red herring because I spent time trying to undo those changes. Tried a system restore, checked the registry as outlined in this thread, and a few other things. Was almost ready to chuck it all and restore from backup when I tried using another computer to go to my Windows Home Server and get some software. Turns out the WHS was responding to pings, but was not accepting any network connections. Since my black screen computer had several things redirected there (Documents, Pictures, some libraries), it apparently was causing the hang during boot. Another symptom I discovered late in the game was that eventually (10-12 mins) the black screen system would finally pick up and continue the logon like nothing had happened. Anyway, I'm assuming something similar could happen for any network system that is not able to get to its shares on a hosted server. After a reset of the WHS system (and it had apparently hung after installing some Microsoft updates) everything was humming along again. Hope that helps. You get the gold star my new best friend. I had multiple Windows 7 machines all get the dreaded black screen at the same time. Nothing made sense until I read your post. I reset the WHS and all is good. Thanks again!
July 11th, 2010 5:05pm

hi dear this type of problem come coz your windows is not orignal llz buy orignal product or use crack
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July 14th, 2010 5:04pm

Plain english please, for us novices. I actually restored my system to factory condition after days of frustration and trying the sugestions posted. I'm running Vista business. After downloading 3 years worth of updates and reinstalling my programs and docs, I'm still getting the black screen. This time it doesn't respond to ctrl+alt+delete, and I have to force a shutdown. How does one reset a WHS? The problem computer shares an internet connection through cat5 home network. I can't believe no one can pinpoint a cause for this and prescribe a permanent fix, not a work around. This is as bad as trying to install updated flash player. No help from Adobe there. This appears to have been going on for a long time - VERY frustrating.
July 17th, 2010 2:14am

FYI I have this problem as well. It ONLY occurs when I boot my PC with a Blu-Ray disc in the drive (I haven't tried a standard DVD). If I boot the PC w/o a Blu-Ray disc in the drive it boots fine. I ran the Black Screen fix on prevx website but no luck. For me the Blu-Ray disc is the x-factor. Just not sure how to fix, other than to boot w/o. I was amazed when this was the answer to my problem. After two days of doing everything I knew to fix it, searching the web and trying eeverything posted, it came down to this. I don't usually keep Blu-Ray disks in the drive. I backup files and then store the disks. But I happened to watch a movie at night and it ran longer then I was willing to stay up. So when I started up the following morning I encountered the black screen with only a movable white pointer, and had totally forgotten about the disk in the drive. Many thanks for posting your solution.G
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July 18th, 2010 12:42am

i have this problem also,everything was fine and dandy,Then i installed the trial version of Microsoft Office 2010 and got a few updates.Things seemed to be fine,I said to myself restart now that all updates are done,and thats all she wrote.Black screen with everything i do.Computer just won't advance,if i try f8 it sticks if i try from a disk it stcks,If i try in safe mode it sticks without performing any task.I tried the disk i have for it the same thing happens,I tried a new drive new video card and get the same results.How can i recover at all if it won't advance!? I'm sure i could recover if it booted to the desktop but that aint happening.I even tried Suse Linux but it freezes on setup also,I fear that this computer is good for nothing but parts if i can't solve this.I just can't believe the Office 2010 did it,if i didn't see it with my own eyes,and i downloaded it from Microsoft,I've used hacked versions and this never happened,go figure...‹(•¿•)›
July 25th, 2010 8:21pm

Thx Wolflead6....... and all for the informations you wrote here. Infact I tried all the solutions you gave here but none of them helped, except the one that Wolflead6 wrote........... Just like that delete the Shell item through the regedit. BINGO it worked perfect till now. thanks to all
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July 30th, 2010 3:08pm

This is MADDENING! I am running Windows 7 64 bit edition and every time I try to install a Microsoft update, I get the black desktop after logging in. I have tried the prevx fix and the registry fix (deleting 'shell' and recreating the key). It doesn't work for me unfortunately. I now have 18 'important' updates available and can't install any of them. Any other suggestions as to what's causing this? There's got to be a lot of Microsoft users experiencing the problem and it seems to have been around since the beta version. I just don't know what else to try and I hate not being able to update my system. Any and all opinions, perspectives, and thoughts are appreciated! Thanks!
July 30th, 2010 5:51pm

OK. I tried just deleting the 'Shell' key and rebooting rather than deleting and then re-creating it with an entry of 'explorer.exe'. That worked for 3 updates I selected so I am cautiously optimistic. I am applying the remaing updates (15 I think) to see what happens.
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July 30th, 2010 6:16pm

The saga continues. Upon installing the remaining 15 updates and rebooting I got the black desktop again. I assumed Windows had re-created the Shell key and opened regedit expected to delete it again. To my surprise, there was no Shell key. I thought I'd recreate it, reboot and see if it made a difference. It didn't, still got the black desktop. So I deleted the Shell key and rebooted, still got black desktop. So, I restored back to the previous update and it works again. I got 3 of the updates installed and now have no Shell key but can't install any more updates without getting the black desktop. There's no Shell key to delete now! Frustrating! Would welcome any more thoughts or ideas. Any other sources of a fix anybody know of or any place else to go to look for answers? I almost ready to open a ticket with Microsoft but can't stand to spend the money to probably have them tell me to re-install Windows.
July 30th, 2010 6:48pm

Got on the phone with Microsoft for about two hours trying a bunch of fixes. At the end of the end, I just did an in place upgrade which has worked perfectly. All my programs, settings, data, etc. are untouched and the the system works great with no black desktop and 32 'important' updates installed! My recommendation if you have fix the problem with some of the simple fixes listed here is just do the in place upgrade. You'll save yourself a lot of troubleshooting and wasted time.
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July 31st, 2010 4:56am

Uninstall Display Adapter From Safe Mode... Restart Computer Into Normal Mode.. Install The Appropriate Drivers For Ur Graphics Card. Set Resolution To Maximum But The One Recommended For Ur Monitor... Let Me Know If This Helps.....
August 1st, 2010 7:18am

Hello Linda, My problem is that I cannot access safe mode. My monitor immediately goes to sleep upon booting up the system. I have owned my new HP 2009m desktop for approximately a month now and this just started happening about a week ago. My operating system is Windows 7. I would appreciate any help I can get. Thank you in advance for taking the time to possibly resolve my problem. Have a good day, LORI
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August 4th, 2010 12:42am

That's A brand New Computer, Which Shouldnt Be Doing That... Would recommend To Call Hp Techsupport and get ur issue taken care right away....
August 13th, 2010 8:47am

Of all the things I've tried and tried.. the simplest solution was there under my nose and I totally feel ashamed that I haven't thought of this... thank you XD
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August 14th, 2010 4:12pm

Thank you Samir it's working for me !!!
August 20th, 2010 7:05pm

This works perfectly :) !!!!
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August 24th, 2010 5:47pm

The Bottom Line here is There is no fix or cure...‹(•¿•)›
September 5th, 2010 10:26pm

oskathemighty... I hope you are wrong Because I have just taken delivery of 3 Alienware laptops within 3 days... one (with only Norton IS added) was brought up to date with MS Windows 7 and gave the oft reported Black Screen flashing cursor with only F2 and F12 operational. As it was Nvidia graphics card thought it may be a driver conflict but no it was joined some one week later by the 2nd Alienware with different software and a Radeon Graphics card. When the third machine finally arrived it took less than a week to crash out this time it had a different I7 processor so having ruled out Graphics cards and processors and all running different software the only conclusion we can come to is it is the operating system which itself was fine until the updates installed. We concluded that the first having been manually updated was the first to reach the 'patch of death' followed by the second on auto update... the third which arrived later and again was auto updated took roughly the same time to go down as the second. As a Scientist I proffer the following... there are too many reports from owners of different marques of computer for this to be coincidence, and the only common denominator is Windows 7 and its updates. If Newspaper reports are anything to go by then by their own admission MS admit that the problem also occurred in Windows XP, Vista etc this acknowledges they are aware of the problem however have not been prepared to fix nor publicise it (So much then for those of us who are faced with the hours sorting out a possible cure we are left very much to sort the problem out on our own ( albeit having paid Microsoft for the privelege of so doing)... in most cases I suspect that other posters like us were not given any other choice in OS for the machine they purchased or if they were it was the choice of which version of W7 they wanted). The only conclusion I can come to is that given the failure of uptake for Vista the company don't want to blight W7 with bad publicity rather preferring to show that all in the garden was rosy I have used all versions of Microsoft through my working life and found XP to be the best (I have never had a problem like this on the 6 1/2 yearold 'e-machines' I am typing on it now with WindowsXP) In my house we can even say "come back Vista all is forgiven" In my view instead of developing Windows 8 Microsoft should look to producing a Windows 7 system that is fit for purpose instead of treating a proportion of its paying customers as 'collateral damage' and the rest as unpaid problem solvers for the next generation of software. Windows 7 like most things made today suffers from the modern curse where the style of the product is more important than its substance S_o_I
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September 12th, 2010 2:09pm

it worked for me! Thanks man
September 22nd, 2010 4:53pm

Wow, such a long thread... Anybody care to tag which ones resolved their problem? please. :) it will be helpful for reference. Ceasar FreeTech@cesabarre.com
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September 22nd, 2010 8:53pm

it could be both. HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Userinit HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell I fixed my by modifying the Shell key right click Shell leave rest but on value data: explorer.exe should be the only thing in there. check your Userinit as well, compare to a good regestry. hope this help. and I do like to give credit to all of the above otherwise I wouldn't know where to start. Nice team work. jon
September 24th, 2010 3:50pm

I've have Sophos, and I am getting popup from it every 5 minutes. Sophos did quarantine it but I guess user authorized it. :(jon
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September 24th, 2010 4:13pm

god dam it, please excuse my language. HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell got modified again. jon
September 24th, 2010 4:15pm

what's the value? what file does it points to? Free Tech
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September 25th, 2010 5:59pm

Hello, this discussion is about one year old. I didn't find here real fix... I scrolled quickly posts and made a conclusion that the issue is related to standalone computers. I just added 30 W7 machines to 2003 domaine with 1000+ XP machines. All W7 have the same issue. When a user (or admin) logs in, instead of corporate image pusched by GPO he gets BLACK desktop background. All patches installed. Can somebody share an experience in W7 in domaine environment. Thx. Michael."When you hit a wrong note it's the next note that makes it good or bad". Miles Davis
October 1st, 2010 3:57pm

http://sautech.blogspot.com/2010/10/windows-7-black-screen-problem-solution.html your solution is here... thankyou dont forget to comment or rate if the above post was helpful =)
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October 11th, 2010 9:12am

I have the same problem occur after a windows update. Is this really a joke? A brand new out of the box system with a single update and then suddenly a black screen, no mouse, no keyboard (both wireless). Just before this happened I had an issue with the video settings - they were automatically resetting to a lower resolution. So I am assuming this is a video issue related to the this crappy OS. Just as a side vent: Windows XP (a very reliable OS) is hands and shoulders above this shinny box garbage.
October 12th, 2010 10:56pm

Need to check the link
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October 13th, 2010 12:14pm

worked for me...thanks!!!!
October 22nd, 2010 6:51pm

this fix worked for me...thanks!! I had blank/black screen but
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October 22nd, 2010 6:52pm

i have the same symptoms, but i use malwarebytes and they find 5 malwares, reboot and everything works fine, its malware
October 26th, 2010 5:28pm

i have the same problem like most people...black screen, etc...also i dont have a system restore point...startup repair doesnt help either...wat other opition do i have besides re installing the whole thing cus i dont have a disc thank you
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November 2nd, 2010 7:41pm

simple self cure: set password to your account . the next boot will still blackout.after the windows logo animation,you will halted at password prompt screen (you can't see it 'cause its black,only the mouse cursor show up). just start typing your password and enter.if your password correct, the screen will show up just like normal after e few second. if it doesn't you might enter the wrong password,just re-enter untill it show up.
November 3rd, 2010 12:39am

I have a very similiar problem and have not been resolved yet. I have a Dell E6510 with windows 7 64 bit. It is brand new and I received it just 5 days ago. I do not think it is due to virus or malware as the machine is new. Initially, on day 5since I received it, I found it only have black screen while mouse icon was shown. I can start task manager - but I can not start explorer from task manager. I tried to restore the system to a previous point, there are 4 points, each after a microsoft update. But my restoration fails (each one) at last step. I decided to make a clean installation -- While Dell technical support seems a little scared at this idea. I make a clean installation, so everything is OK initially, but I found the network adpater and wireless and Broadcom USH and an unknown driver were not installed. So I download the drivers from dell website and installed the driver. After restart, the system become worsen as after the system is powered up, it enter the black screen and without mouse icon. I can not even make another clean reinstallation, after the "Loading files" of restoration process, it entered black screen again without mouse. Who can help and many thanks. Sean
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November 16th, 2010 11:12am

I have the same problem. I can press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and load Task Manager but when I try to run explorer.exe, it says 'Windows cannot find 'explorer.exe'. I ran Malwarebytes on my PC and it didn't detect anything. I currently have Norton Internet Security installed. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate.
November 17th, 2010 9:32am

Shell editing is the perfect answer.
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November 20th, 2010 7:23am

This worked for me...just had the issue this afternoon, pulled the Ethernet plug and I got my computer back. Thanks for offering the solution.Gilberto J Perera, Microsoft MVP Editor, GilsMethod.com | How-to Guides for the Rest of Us
November 21st, 2010 5:58pm

Turned off Trend Micro. This fixed our issue in this particular case after trying the third party fix, restore points, and repair from Windows 7 disc did not resolve.
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November 22nd, 2010 11:36am

hai... i suffer the same problem with you.. please if you know how to cure this problem without formating my laptop, pls tell me... i really need to know...
December 5th, 2010 3:29pm

this seems to be a regular occurence especially when using MS Win7 Professional There will be instances where you cant even access the Task Manager and there is no Restore point on your computer/laptop In this instance you logon as per normal (till you're the black screen with only the cursor) Press CTRL +t / CTRL+y -- a window will pop-up From this window try to find your way to the C: drive or local disk ( type C:\) another window will pop-up from there search for the Explorer.exe application -- double click it . Your desktop should be back -- REMEMBER to always update your RESTORE points on your PC and do your BACKUPS -- formatting should be the last option when there's no solution -- thanks
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December 9th, 2010 7:08am

Just now I have resolved the problem by fixing the blackscreen. 1. If you have logged in the windows and run the explorer.exe through Task Manager. Then you simply download the following, run and reboot the pc to fix the problem. http://info.prevx.com/download.asp?GRAB=BLACKSCREENFIX. 2. If haven't logged in to the windows. Start the pc and logon. a. On blank run Task Manager by Ctrl+Alt+Del. b. In Task Manager- Press "Applications" Tab and press New Task c. browse for internet explorer or run "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplorer.exe" without quotes. d. Now run the web id : " http://info.prevx.com/download.asp?GRAB=BLACKSCREENFIX" and download when prompted. e. run the same program and reboot the pc to fix the problem. Thanks to the site resolved my problem :http://www.prevx.com/blog/140/Black-Screen-woes-could-affect-millions-on-Windows--Vista-and-XP.html" Srinivas NTPC. India.
December 25th, 2010 6:13am

Absolute genius! I had 5 network drives 1 of them being a QNAP turbo NAS, all the drives could not connect as i'm off the LAN and that caused the black screen. Thanks for posting, you've save me a lot of trouble! :-)
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January 5th, 2011 5:46pm

Personally the prevx fix did not work for me and i was almost out of options before i found this site. http://www.thewindowsclub.com/explorer-exe-wont-start-at-boot-in-windows I am using windows 7 and i would get a normal login screen, after logging in i would get black screen, no taskbar, no start menu etc. I was able to run task manager with ctrl+alt+delete The general info for checking out your registry keys is a good idea. I followed the instructions and all my registry keys were in order as far as i could tell. The one thing that did resolve my problem was going to task manager, if i had access to the start menu it would be more simple. So i just give you instructions on running cmd prompt as an admin from task manager. File>New task (Run...)> Browse > Local Disc C > Windows > search the windows folder for "cmd" no quotes in the upper right search pane. When you locate cmd.exe right click and run as administrator. When you get the cmd prompt up and running type " sfc/scannow " no quoates. This scans your sys files looking for errors, takes a minute then asks for a reboot. Problem solved for me, thanks to this guys information.
January 23rd, 2011 1:28pm

Personally the prevx fix did not work for me and i was almost out of options before i found this site. http://www.thewindowsclub.com/explorer-exe-wont-start-at-boot-in-windows I am using windows 7 and i would get a normal login screen, after logging in i would get black screen, no taskbar, no start menu etc. I was able to run task manager with ctrl+alt+delete The general info for checking out your registry keys is a good idea. I followed the instructions and all my registry keys were in order as far as i could tell. The one thing that did resolve my problem was going to task manager, if i had access to the start menu it would be more simple. So i just give you instructions on running cmd prompt as an admin from task manager. File>New task (Run...)> Browse > Local Disc C > Windows > search the windows folder for "cmd" no quotes in the upper right search pane. When you locate cmd.exe right click and run as administrator. When you get the cmd prompt up and running type " sfc/scannow " no quotes. Run this command by hitting enter. This scans your system files looking for errors, takes a minute then asks for a reboot. Problem solved for me, thanks to this guys information.
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January 23rd, 2011 9:23pm

Note - my problem occurred on a Windows 7 Ultimate machine that was upgraded from Vista Ultimate. Perhaps something during upgrade may have introduced some registry corruption that didn't show up until another value in the registry was changed later? BTW, to confirm the fix & narrow down this fix, perhaps someone w/ a broken machine can reboot into Safe Mode, run RegEdit, delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell then recreate the Shell key as a REG_SZ key, with the value explorer.exe. If that works, that could help confirm the cause and allow us to give standalone instructions for a fix that we can have more confidence in (as opposed to telling people to run an exe from a third party). I have done this and can verify that "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell" had a value of {explorer.exe""} and when deleted and replaced with a value of {explorer.exe} my system returned to normal operation.
January 27th, 2011 11:36am

Latitude E6310 about 4 months old, turned off Friday in doc, now boots to black screen, white cursor. Tried 1) Safe boot - Same behavior 2) external monitor and display - Nothing 3) Boot to Win7 Pro CD (Dell) - Repair - System restore a) Won't run the system restore because memory cannot be read :(. I can see my restore from a known good time and I can't restore it from rstcui.exe on the disk or in C:\Windows\System32. Better not have shipped the disk like this cause that's freaking embarassing if you did. 4) None of the registry edits in this feed worked. 5) I don't have the software mentioned above. What the heck guys? There needs to be a fix for this! I'm just going to boot with UBCD and copy the data off and re-image it.
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January 31st, 2011 9:18pm

Seems like this is happening to a lot of people since around the end of Jan 2011. It is different than the other issue with prevx is given as the fix.
February 4th, 2011 10:02pm

Hey Perfect710, Don't listen to anyone else here (no offense) but I was looking for a problem of my own with a game I have and saw yours on google (I have this problem sometimes too). You said that the task manager screen showed up? Well, in that case, all you have to do is ctrl+alt+del and go into task manager. From there, go to processes and find explorer.exe (this is what displays your desktop). End the process and then find File. From there, go to New Task(Run...) and then type in explorer.exe (it also might already be there because you just ended the process). Press Enter. Your desktop will now show up. Remember this as this problem might happen again. The step are as follows to make sure: 1. Ctrl+Alt+Del 2. Processes 3. End process explorer.exe 4. Go to File --> New Task (Run...) 5. Enter explorer.exe 6. Press Enter 7. REMEBER THIS!
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February 6th, 2011 7:34pm

Hi i had the same problem. a few months ago i deleted microsoft framework... and my screen was black and no desktop. so yesterday i redownloaded the version 4.0.30319.1 and it fixed my problem. hope it helped. http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Signatures-Updates/NET-Framework.shtml link for download :)
February 20th, 2011 10:20pm

hey, i got the black screen. and what do u know i used your method and it worked, no deleted files, no reinstalled thanks mate
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February 24th, 2011 12:12pm

I started having this problem Mid Feb. Uninstalled framework and logon times have gone back to normal. Thanks Alex.
February 25th, 2011 6:13am

I got this problem after breaking my boot sector and getting the missing bootmgr screen. Doing a system restore from the windows install disk brought back my bootsector but also this problem. started left the computer on and started googling and 3 minutes later my desktop popped up :) might be worth mentioning for people who read this (if it hasnt already been mentioned), if you bring up task manager and click new task and type cmd you can get command prompt which might help a few people.
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February 27th, 2011 1:15pm

Here's another "me too, me too," but I haven't seen anyone address what I've observed yet. Last weekend (Feb 28, 2011) I opened my laptop and saw that Windows updates had downloaded and the computer needed to restart. I restarted, and then had this black screen problem. Black screen on boot after Windows 7 splash, no login option. Restarted in Safe Mode, system started ok, rebooted, went to black screen again. After getting past the initial frustration, I restarted in Safe Mode again, went to System Restore, and restored to the point before the Windows "critical" update. So far so good, laptop booted just fine. Now, move to today, March 8, 2011. Another notice that a Windows critical update had been installed and the computer needed to be restarted. Hesitantly, I did so. This time, after first running into the BLUE screen of death, I then got the BLACK screen after rebooting into Safe Mode! I could not, not matter how many times I tried, get past the black screen...Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt...no success! Again, after getting past my (very real) frustration, I pressed F8 on login and went to the "repair your computer" option. This did not help. I tried again, selecting System Recovery this time. I saw TWO, yes, TWO, Windows Critical Updates, both with today's date. I selected the point before the first one. No luck. Went through it all again, selected the pont before the second one, and this time had success. So, I say all this to ask the question...is it possible the Windows Update installations have a bug in them?
March 8th, 2011 12:03pm

Windows 7 Ent on a Lenovo X200... Tried the reg hack...but my Shell is already a REG_SZ with a value of explorer.exe... And yet I am still getting the black screen of death... Any other ideas?
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March 8th, 2011 12:19pm

Windows 7 Ent on a Lenovo X200... Tried the reg hack...but my Shell setting is already a REG_SZ with a value of explorer.exe... And yet I am still getting the black screen of death... Any other ideas?
March 8th, 2011 12:20pm

can anyone try to install SP1 to verify if this symptom persist ?
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March 10th, 2011 3:56am

My issues started sometime after the installation of W7 SP1. Black Screen of Death in admin/regular and safe mode. Ctrl+Alt+Del does open up ctrl panel. Ending explorer.exe and running it again through file>run>explorer.exe does not work. The directions from the prevx fix for the run command to directly download and run the prevx fix does not fix the issue. No popups come up so I'm not even certain that is completely installing. File>run>firefox.exe does open firefox. I can then download the prevx file that way and click on it to run. Nothing happens, restart does nothing. File>run>browse locks up the task manager. So I can't browse files on my computer. I then have to reopen task manager to kill the locked one. Booting from the W7 backup disk and running the repair tool does not work. It says something was repaired, but upon restart we're back to the black screen of death. I do not have a restore point to back date to so that doesn't work. Even though they should exist. This solution from another source was successfully completed (as in the steps worked) but it still didnt fix my issue. 1) Use the vista DVD to go to the repair mode. 2) From the same screen where you do the system restore, there's an option to open an administrative command prompt. 3) That should open in X:\Sources or something like that 4) Go to the windows drive by entering C: 5) Now go to the windows event log folder on your machine (C:\Windows\System32\winevt): cd c:\windows\system32\winevt 6) ren Logs Logs_bad 7) mkdir Logs This will create an empty folder for new event logs. My next step is to try the shell fixes mentioned above. I'll post an update tonight.
March 15th, 2011 3:26pm

I had SP1 and IE9 installed on OS. I got a black screen.I had an image on second hard drive, just recovered it and all good.
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March 17th, 2011 5:25pm

alll started after an mailwarebytes scan found 3 treads did the recovery in mailwarebytes askes me to restart after restart I got the black screen shell fix not woking nothing wont fix it when enterring Explorer.exe in RUN cmd get prompet for 2 sec and nothing happens!!! sorry for my ENglish can someone please finx a fixx!! not even google has this fix??
March 17th, 2011 6:58pm

There are a lot of great ideas here but what is Microsoft's solution to this problem? I have a brand new machine, blank hard drive and all. I install Win7 and everthing is fine. But when I run the updates, that's when I get the blank screen. I've reinstalled the OS 4 times and still have the same problem. I've concluded that it's an update that is causing the problem but which one? I'm seeing 54 updates.
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March 26th, 2011 3:21pm

I also suffered from a black screen with visible mouse pointer issue *after* SP1. What helped for me is described at the end of my thread "After SP1: no more hardware accelerated opengl (only opengl in software mode)?" in this subforum. For me, uninstalling my AGP chipset driver and having Windows reinstall it automatically was the definitive solution. Of course, other folks may be in a different situation and not even use an old AGP video card and still get that problem... egman
March 26th, 2011 6:21pm

The quickest way to resolve the screen issue is to log in as the system administrator (local administrator). Add yourself to the users group, even if you are in the administrators group. Log out of the local administrator account and back in as yourself and the system works perfectly.
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March 31st, 2011 8:07am

Awesome man. You totally saved my day! I dunno how I've gotten myself into (everything was running just normal, suddenly the notebook shut down in a hard way and then on start, all I could do was just staring into black screen). As many users experienced, no task manager was working for me, center of ease was crashing... then I tried your advice to delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell" key in a safe mode, and voila - I'm back in my system! ...I've even created new liveID to tell you this.. so guys, if you are experiencing this problem, TRY THIS SOLUTION as is it totally simple and you may get your ass saved real quick :) Howgh
April 3rd, 2011 5:47am

Add me to the list of frustrated black screen victims. My case is a bit unusual in that I have multiple users set up. Only the administrative user's account went to black screen, the other users were fine. System restore was of no use, disk scans and antivirus scans showed no errors. Ctrl-Alt-Delete to open the task manager and manually ending the explorer.exe process, followed by opening a new task "explorer" was a temporary fix, but wasn't a permanent answer. My cause turned out to be a power saver utility provided by my motherboard manufacturer. Uninstalling that fixed the black screen issue. That program has been installed for months, all I can figure is that something in Win 7 SP1 conflicted with it when I tried adjusting it. Moral of the story is to undo any changes you made recently and not rely on System Restore to catch them all.
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April 4th, 2011 12:54pm

thanks you very very very much friend you are really a master i try hunder of way but all are failed.Only your solution work
April 6th, 2011 2:19pm

OH MY GOD MAN YOU ARE A FREAKING SAINT! I though my computor was fried for good.
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April 13th, 2011 5:33pm

It works for my Windows Ultimate screen black-out problem. Thanks a lot! 1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc on the keyboard to bring up Task Manager. 2. Click File -> New Task (Run…) 3. Type explorer.exe and then press Enter.
April 13th, 2011 6:07pm

Very good solution! Simple and it really works! Thanks a lot!!!
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April 14th, 2011 5:41pm

Hello Brian, Thanks for the detailed explanation. I am stuck with the black screen and curser. CNTL+ALT+DEL do not work, 5 times SHIFT do not work, CNTRL+SHIFT+ ESC do not. It is completely black and only mouse curser which can be moved. I tried to go into Repair Computer Option and ran Start up repair, It said there is no problems found. I tried to see if there is a system restore point, none of them were there. So I tried to edit the registry manually, I went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell and changed(Deleted and Created) the value to explorer.exe But the next time I login the sam blcak screen and here at the repair area, nothing has changed to registry. I read so many articles in the past 4 days and tried load hive and try to change the key from cmd.exe /k start cmd.exe but nothing happens. Can you please please help. I have few important configurations done in that system like outlook with 4 mail configured and it has 15k emails in it. my POP provider will not give me date wise download, So I cannot download 20K emails again. This is just the example of a painfull situation that i am in. Please help. The issue happened wihen I did a force shutdown when the computer was unresponsive after showing desktop. Thanks, Dave
April 18th, 2011 5:24pm

Hi this is sridhar and i think ur updated ur WINDOWS UPDATE so it shows like that. U can do one thing first u have to download the WINDOWS ACTIVATOR and install ur system automatically system will restart other wise u have to do that..................
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April 19th, 2011 12:19am

I finally figured it out. I had to completely remove my ASUS EAX1050 Video card from my system. I'm currently using the onboard SVGA connection. ASUS does not have a Windows 7 driver and I guess Microsoft is using a generic driver in Win7. In either case, it does not work.
April 21st, 2011 2:09pm

My thanks to everyone here to brought some sanity back to my life... knowing others were having the same sort of problem made it seem less like I did something critically wrong whilst rebuilding my desktop. Loaded a new WD 1TB drive and Windows Home Pro... everything went well until some point in loading software last night. Got the Black Screen, and did all the kinds of things the rest of you did... all to no avail. So assumed W7 did not load properly. Reloaded it, ready to start over. But along the way again, got the black screen. I did notice that just as it went dark the Windows chime sounded, so on a flyer, I assumed the 'password' screen might be open in the dark. Typed in my P/W and lo and behold my desktop background appeared, but no icons. More rebooting in all variants of 'safe' to no avail... until I again got the desktop background... but this time after having read all the input from that site I mentioned, decided it may be some sort of problem related to the screen output. Right clicked in the middle of the desktop and got a window with choices: view, sort, refresh... and "graphics options" which I chose. Next window gave me "output to:" choice... when selected, got 4 choices: monitor; digital display; clone displays; extended desktop (which was checked) there were two choice under it... monitor & digital display; digital display and monitor (did not see which had been selected). I instead checked "monitor" and presto chango my desktop appeared. Now if I were a betting man, I'd have to think this may be a root problem MS has not addressed. Though I have no idea whatsoever what the difference between a monitor and digital display... or what the sequence differences are in the last window... by selecting the simple choice of "monitor" I am forcing the output to my monitor alone. For now I'm a happy camper... we'll see if it raises its ugly head again soon. For now, I owe myself a cold beer! Aging Hippy
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April 22nd, 2011 5:09pm

thanks for the fix dude its realy simple and easy and it worked for me thanks again
April 24th, 2011 12:49pm

This may be irrelevant, but I waited several minutes before I logged onto my user. I experience the 'black screen of death' when I log onto my account straight after start up. Waiting around 2-3 minutes seemed to somewhat fix the problem for me. Hope this could be of any use!
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April 24th, 2011 7:58pm

thanks Linda I sucessfully do it :D add me on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/huzaimytechno
May 12th, 2011 5:33am

Whomever said it above was dead on..... I had the black screen of death, and I have a NAS, I disconnected my ethernet cable, and disabled wireless, and wham it booted. I then went upstairs and rebooted my NAS and it works as well. Was a problem with Windows looking for the mapped drive, and hanging. I am SO glad I did not reimage which is what Dell told me I HAD to do. This site saved my bacon.
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May 21st, 2011 6:04pm

I've recently been blessed with this black screen on Windows 7 Pro and have read this entire thread for a solution. I'm on a basic Latitude 13 laptop with solid state drive. After the BIOS and Windows logo I have a black screen with mouse pointer. I can issue no keyboard commands or clicks. I can only move the pointer around. I've disconnected ethernet cable and disabled wireless. All versions of Safe Mode have the same black screen result. Here is what I've attempted : 1 - Windows 7 Pro disc Repair - System Restore points have same black screen result, startup recovery displays a message of a recently added device (?) but doesnt solve. I ran a CHCKDSC command, but still have the same black screen issue. 2 - Ive removed the hard drive and scanned it through another machine for malware using updated and multiple malware removal software and antivirus. When the hard drive is reinstalled, same result. Can someone PLEASE help me find a solution for this?
May 24th, 2011 10:11am

Thanks Samir_md, You just fixed my PC. Right on !!!
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June 13th, 2011 2:46am

Thank you very much Samir_md! I tried it and it worked!
June 22nd, 2011 4:05am

Do the solution proposed by Samir_md. I did it and it worked!
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June 22nd, 2011 4:06am

Yes, It solves the problem. In my case, a malware made this changed in registry. In process of cleaning my laptop and bringing it to normal state i.e. solving the black screen issue, I just made the change suggested by you and it worked perfectly. Many Thanks,
July 2nd, 2011 4:33am

> http://sautech.blogspot.com/2010/10/windows-7-black-screen-problem-solution.html Sorry, this is NOT a solution, it's stabbing in the dark. Guess what ... the problem with the Win 7 black screen after logon problem is that you get ... A BLACK SCREEN! (surprise, surprise) Means that YOU DON'T SEE what CTRL+ALT+DEL does, or if it does anything at all. I examined the situation with a kernel debugger via a serial terminal, and I found that hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL does NOTHING, in fact sometimes not even a keyboard event is created, but if one is created, it will not be read from the input queue. AFAI could see, what happens is that right after user login, explorer.exe is started with kernel privileges. It does a bunch of things, like restoring the user profile settings, etc., and ... restoring mapped network drives! And there's the root cause (at least in my case -- it might be different for other people): if network drives that have been mapped in a previous session are unavailable, explorer.exe will try to reconnect them over and over again, until eventually it will run into a timeout. The more drives were mapped, the longer it will take, because reconnect attempts are made sequentially by the same process, they're not parallelized. On the other hand, once all reconnect attempts have run into a timeout, the GUI will continue to load just like nothing had happened, if you wait just long enough. Quick hack: don't map network drives with the Explorer, use a logon script instead and run it via a link in the Startup folder. This will ensure that the whole Explorer GUI has already loaded, and is running with user privileges (thus it can't lock up the kernel anymore). Permanent solution: Microsoft should rewrite their code: the explorer.exe instance that is started at logon should instantly fork a new explorer.exe process for each task, e.g., a separate process should be forked for each network drive that is going to be mapped, and forked explorer.exe processes should run with normal user privileges (wherever possible).
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July 8th, 2011 9:23am

I may have found a solution to this problem, well atleast in a domain environment. We have four PC's running Windows 7 Ent and three of the machines are booting to the black screen after login, i opened task manager and ended the windows startup script process and bam, the desktop loaded as normal, so the script we are using thats comming from our server running Windows Server 2003 is not compatible with Windows 7 causing the black screen at login, hope this helps those of you in an domain environment.
July 8th, 2011 4:11pm

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