Windows 7 boots but nothing works

It is a Dell Inspiron, so it came with an onboard repair utility. I used the Startup Repair tool, but it found no problems. The diagnostics tools found no issues with the hard drive or any of the other major system components. However, this error came up which appears to be related to the multi-card SD, micro SD, etc. It seems that this is unrelated to the black screen.

I unplugged the card reader and still had the same problem. Otherwise, it passes all other tests the onboard diagnostic utility has including, memory tests, fan tests, hard drive tests, etc. I have not, however, tried a full system restore yet. From what I've read in several forums, many have tried this in similar situations and still had the same problem.

Since there are several files I'd rather not lose, I wanted to explore all other avenues. Sorry if this is a repeat question in the forum. Here is as much of the system info that I can gather without having the PC on not mine, I'm doing this for a friend :. I hope I've been thorough enough to allow you to help me without wasting any of your time, and I thank you in advance.

Without the correct driver, the hardware or device that you want to use won't work properly. To confirm the same, start the Computer in low-resolution video mode. This starts Windows using your current video driver and using low resolution and refresh rate settings. This option is available in Advanced startup options. To start you computer in low-resolution video mode, follow the steps below: 1. Press and hold the F8 key as your computer restarts.

If the problem doesn't reappear in low-resolution mode, then the issue is driver related. You can resolve this by downloading display card driver from the manufacturer's website. Was this reply helpful? Yes No. The trick is to boot Windows into Safe Mode, which avoids potential problems by skipping the autoloading programs and all but the most basic drivers. Once there, you should be able to disable all of your enabled autoloading programs. How this is done depends on your version of Windows.

Boot the computer and immediately start pressing and releasing F8 over and over again. Instead of the Windows login screen, you should get the Advanced Boot Options menu. Select Safe Mode. Click the Startup tab. Had the same problem on my domain account. Somethimes a reboot helped then after a certain point no more.

I tried the 3rd party fix -- unfortunately no luck. I also took a look at the Shell key 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. Every so often the blue wheel spins on the pointer. I have to shut down via power button to fix it. It is unclear if you were answering me Any downside to trying it? I have your solution, it is registy problem, boot up your pc,.

Run a new task called regedit. Click on the winlogon folder. Now in the right hand panel click on shell. The data value should only be explorer. Do this by double clicking on shell and edit the value and hit ok. Restart and thats it! 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. 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. I ended the "dwm. 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. Download Malewarebytes do a quick scan, you will probably find a file named hjkshell. Clean that and you should be good. I have your solution, it is a registy problem. Boot up your pc,. 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. Jim, you are a life saver. I was going insane trying every other solution proposed - sure enough, this was it. 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. The hacker messed up though and garbled the data with an invalid path so userinit. In general the black screen means there has been a foul up before explorer. My desktop got blacked out after loggin in.

I tried installing the missing dll but no gain. 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.

The original entry had both explorer. 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. 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!

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.

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.

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. Infact I tried all the solutions you gave here but none of them helped, except the one that Wolflead6 wrote 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. 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.

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. 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! 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.

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. 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. 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 m 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. Because I have just taken delivery of 3 Alienware laptops within 3 days 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 As a Scientist I proffer the following 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 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.

Windows 7 like most things made today suffers from the modern curse where the style of the product is more important than its substance. Wow, such a long thread Anybody care to tag which ones resolved their problem? FreeTech cesabarre.

I fixed my by modifying the Shell key right click Shell leave rest but on value data: explorer. Nice team work. Free Tech.

I scrolled quickly posts and made a conclusion that the issue is related to standalone computers. All W7 have the same issue. 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. 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. I have the same problem. 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. In this instance you logon as per normal till you're the black screen with only the cursor. Absolute genius! Personally the prevx fix did not work for me and i was almost out of options before i found this site. 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. 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. Run this command by hitting enter. Latitude E about 4 months old, turned off Friday in doc, now boots to black screen, white cursor.

I can see my restore from a known good time and I can't restore it from rstcui. Better not have shipped the disk like this cause that's freaking embarassing if you did. Seems like this is happening to a lot of people since around the end of Jan It is different than the other issue with prevx is given as the fix. 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? From there, go to processes and find explorer. End the process and then find File.

From there, go to New Task Run Press Enter. Your desktop will now show up. Remember this as this problem might happen again. The step are as follows to make sure :. Hi i had the same problem.

Here's another "me too, me too," but I haven't seen anyone address what I've observed yet. Last weekend Feb 28, 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, Another notice that a Windows critical update had been installed and the computer needed to be restarted.

Hesitantly, I did so. I could not, not matter how many times I tried, get past the black screen 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 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 Ending explorer. 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. I can then download the prevx file that way and click on it to run. Nothing happens, restart does nothing.

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.

What helped for me is described at the end of my thread "After SP1: no more hardware accelerated opengl only opengl in software mode? 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 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. 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.

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.

Only your solution work. I am stuck with the black screen and curser. 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.

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.

Apparently the problem does not show up in safe mode. As for the startup processes, I got rid of most of them, exactly in the hope that the problem would disappear. I now have very few of them, two or three installed by my antivirus program AVG. The only intervention which in my opinion might fall in this category was done by a friend of mine, when he offered to eliminate the initial password request by Win7, which I considered an annoyance.

I cannot reconstruct exactly what he did to obtain that. I am not sure if the above gives you any hints. I certainly hope so. Thank you again. No answers, no further questions. Are geeks too busy elsewhere? If the problem doesn't arise in Safe mode then there is definitely a problem with one of the background items.

Ulisse33, I'm curious to know how long you actually sit in front of your computer waiting before deciding nothing works?

At times a couple of minutes can seem like an eternity. It was sort of a similar thing that led me to this forum about a year ago and I still don't really know what the problem was, only that it hasn't returned.

Welcome back Geeks, and thank you. I myself took some time answering your latest posts because, during the last couple of days I tried to get help from the web. To my surprise I found lots of it: if you google "win7 freezing on startup" you get great amounts of interesting material to read.

I found however an important difference between my case an those generally reported: the majority of my startups are successful, whereas almost the totality of those reported are "frozen" cases. This of course makes my case more difficult to diagnose, since I can only investigate the few failures I may encounter. Because of this I have decided that, from today, I will take note of all my startups, so that I should end up with statistics that will give me a measure for my problem.

This morning I made ten startups, of which six were normal and four in safe mode. All of them were successful, i. Thus the problem does not show up, and until it does again there is little I - and possibly you - can do. When - and if -the problem arises again, I understand I should first investigate safe booting.

And in case the problem does not show up, I will have to turn back to normal booting, trying to disable the majority of startup programs and then try enabling them one at a time. It will be, I fear, a long and tedious process. Please let me know if you agree to the above and if you can suggest additional procedures. Now to the questions in your post.

As to safe booting GuiltySpark and warlock have the answer in the above. GuiltySpark asks if my AVG is the paid or free version. It is the latter. But I like to ask why he asks this question. Is there perhaps, in the paid version, some special program that might be useful to suggest a solution to my problem? Finally, nosparks reports on a case that might have been similar to mine, which suddenly appeared and then soon disappeared. This may well be the case again: the latest happenings, as reported above, might point in this direction.

I want to point out however that when I first stumbled on my problem I did wait fairly long to see if the "freeze" would go by itself. How long? Possibly several minutes, and at least in one case more than 15, since I recall being interrupted by a long telephone call. At the end of the call everything was still "frozen". Thank you for any help you can give me. The reason I asked about the type of AVG program you have is because if you have the free version which you do , I would advise removing it and trying another free AV.