asked on What is the cause of a black screen?
I think this one is a head-scratcher: My customer has a Dell Latitude 3540 laptop, with Windows 10 installed, version 1909. All the latest patches have been applied. (I applied them myself a few days previously.)
Two days ago, when she logged in all she could see was her cursor on a completely black screen.
I was able to connect remotely and I saw the same thing. When she pressed CTRL+Alt+Del, we could see the dialogue. If we chose "Change password", we could see the Change Password dialogue. But if we chose Task Manager, we could see nothing. In the end I had her send the machine in to our Help Desk office.
Now that the machine is in our office, I can't reproduce the symptom. Yuck. Even when I log in with her credentials, everything works fine.
What could be causing a completely black screen? And why did it go away?
I suspect this is an example of, if we can reproduce the symptom, we can fix it. For now, I can't reproduce it. It's just embarrassing that I have no idea what happened and now I'll send the machine back without fixing anything.
Two days ago, when she logged in all she could see was her cursor on a completely black screen.
I was able to connect remotely and I saw the same thing. When she pressed CTRL+Alt+Del, we could see the dialogue. If we chose "Change password", we could see the Change Password dialogue. But if we chose Task Manager, we could see nothing. In the end I had her send the machine in to our Help Desk office.
Now that the machine is in our office, I can't reproduce the symptom. Yuck. Even when I log in with her credentials, everything works fine.
What could be causing a completely black screen? And why did it go away?
I suspect this is an example of, if we can reproduce the symptom, we can fix it. For now, I can't reproduce it. It's just embarrassing that I have no idea what happened and now I'll send the machine back without fixing anything.
Windows 10DellWindows OSDisplays / Monitors
Last Comment
Dwight Baer
ASKER
You said, "the fast boot feature makes shutting down fairly effective as a recovery option" - Did you mean fairly ineffective?
- When the screen was black I couldn't run Task Manager.
- Now that the problem has gone away, is it likely to come back? What do I do next time? You're saying that restart is better than shutdown.
- When the screen was black I couldn't run Task Manager.
- Now that the problem has gone away, is it likely to come back? What do I do next time? You're saying that restart is better than shutdown.
does every user who logs in has the same issue?
roaming profile in use?
Potentially corrupt profile,
There are times post windows 10 update, that the profile has to be updated during which time, all the user sees is the mouse pointer on a black screen. ...
roaming profile in use?
Potentially corrupt profile,
There are times post windows 10 update, that the profile has to be updated during which time, all the user sees is the mouse pointer on a black screen. ...
maybe best to turn off fast boot : https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/213195423-How-To-Disable-Fast-Startup-in-Windows-10
Yes, I meant ineffective. Autocorrect guessed wrong. I misread your first post and thought you could bring up task manager.
For such issues, I always recommend RDP for remote connections instead of session sharing programs like VNC or TeamViewer. With RDP, the client determines the display instead of the remote machine.
A docking station can sometimes cause thus behavior even if no external display is connected to the docking station. Dell docks have been particularly notorious for this lately in my experience. Display over USB (any variant) gets very glitchy. Not sure if any of that would apply to you scenario, but that could be a factor that changed when she disconnected it from a dock to ship it to you.
Another possibility, especially if task manager was not coming up, is that the computer thought there was a second display and was spanning displays so some items were on a "display" she couldn't see.
For such issues, I always recommend RDP for remote connections instead of session sharing programs like VNC or TeamViewer. With RDP, the client determines the display instead of the remote machine.
A docking station can sometimes cause thus behavior even if no external display is connected to the docking station. Dell docks have been particularly notorious for this lately in my experience. Display over USB (any variant) gets very glitchy. Not sure if any of that would apply to you scenario, but that could be a factor that changed when she disconnected it from a dock to ship it to you.
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Yes, start explorer.exe in task manager to get your desktop back and diagnose what's going on.
Press the three keys CTRL, Shift and Escape together to bring up task manager directly.
Press the three keys CTRL, Shift and Escape together to bring up task manager directly.
ASKER
Several of you provided responses that are worthy of "This is my solution".
Here's my collection of the best answers:
Note that neither the power button nor a shutdown is sufficient. Since windows 8, the "fast boot" feature makes shutting down fairly ineffective as a recovery option because the OS starts back into memory from a saved state, with programs and DLLs potentially in an unhealthy state also being restored, whereas restart does a full restart of the OS and reloads the state into memory cleanly.
>>>
Potentially corrupt profile.
There are times post windows 10 update, that the profile has to be updated during which time, all the user sees is the mouse pointer on a black screen.
>>>
maybe best to turn off fast boot : https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/213195423-How-To-Disable-Fast-Startup-in-Windows-10
>>>
A docking station can sometimes cause this behavior even if no external display is connected to the docking station. Dell docks have been particularly notorious for this lately in my experience. Display over USB (any variant) gets very glitchy. Not sure if any of that would apply to your scenario, but that could be a factor that changed when she disconnected it from a dock to ship it to you.
>>>
I've seen this behavior many times in Windows 10. And no surprise, this usually happened immediately after I applied Windows updates. It usually occurred once (often only Ctrl+Alt+Del worked but sometimes I was able to bring up Task manager or start explorer.exe) and after reboot, I was able to log on to the desktop without a problem and the issue hasn't come back.
Interestingly, you told us this happened after two days. Maybe there was another update causing this that was installed later. Or maybe she didn't reboot the computer which is different from the shutdown. Anyway, as far as you can log on, you are fine now and I wouldn't expect that the black screen will come back. Maybe with another update in the future.
Here's my collection of the best answers:
Note that neither the power button nor a shutdown is sufficient. Since windows 8, the "fast boot" feature makes shutting down fairly ineffective as a recovery option because the OS starts back into memory from a saved state, with programs and DLLs potentially in an unhealthy state also being restored, whereas restart does a full restart of the OS and reloads the state into memory cleanly.
>>>
Potentially corrupt profile.
There are times post windows 10 update, that the profile has to be updated during which time, all the user sees is the mouse pointer on a black screen.
>>>
maybe best to turn off fast boot : https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/213195423-How-To-Disable-Fast-Startup-in-Windows-10
>>>
A docking station can sometimes cause this behavior even if no external display is connected to the docking station. Dell docks have been particularly notorious for this lately in my experience. Display over USB (any variant) gets very glitchy. Not sure if any of that would apply to your scenario, but that could be a factor that changed when she disconnected it from a dock to ship it to you.
>>>
I've seen this behavior many times in Windows 10. And no surprise, this usually happened immediately after I applied Windows updates. It usually occurred once (often only Ctrl+Alt+Del worked but sometimes I was able to bring up Task manager or start explorer.exe) and after reboot, I was able to log on to the desktop without a problem and the issue hasn't come back.
Interestingly, you told us this happened after two days. Maybe there was another update causing this that was installed later. Or maybe she didn't reboot the computer which is different from the shutdown. Anyway, as far as you can log on, you are fine now and I wouldn't expect that the black screen will come back. Maybe with another update in the future.
ASKER
Answers to arnold's questions:
No ... I was able to RDP as my System Administrator account, and it was fine.
Yes ... roaming profiles are in place.
Yes ... I agree, it could be a corrupt profile. Other symptoms reported by this user support that theory.
No ... I was able to RDP as my System Administrator account, and it was fine.
Yes ... roaming profiles are in place.
Yes ... I agree, it could be a corrupt profile. Other symptoms reported by this user support that theory.
ASKER
Thanks all!
Note that neither the power button nor a shutdown is sufficient. Since windows 8, the "fast boot" feature makes shutting down fairly effective as a recovery option because the OS starts back into memory from a saved state, with programs and DLLs potentially in an unhealthy state also being restored, whereas restart does a full restart of the OS and reloads the state into memory cleanly.