Windows 7 Black screen of death
My two week old computer went down early this afternoon. I've been working all day to fix it with no luck, I'd really appreciate any help or advice that you can offer.
I'll also mention that I am seeing tons of pages on this issue when I search, but none of the fixes I've found so far have done the trick. I have an OEM Windows license so unfortunately contacting MS will be fairly costly at this point.
The window load screen appears as normal and then my screen goes completely blank except for a white mouse pointer. The mouse pointer moves as normal but clicks / key combos / etc do nothing.
It is a new system so there have been a lot of new program installs and changes recently, however I have been too distracted by Dragon Age to have done much since the last restart.
Known changes since the last restart-
Joined system to home network
Installed a Saitek joystick
Installed daemon tools immediately proceeding the crash
I can't find any similar issues related specific to either product so I assume that this is a general windows install issue, or a registry corruption that occurred during one of the installs.
Steps taken so far-
- Attempted to boot to safe mode & safe mode w/ cmd prompt - Same result
- Tried ctrl-shift-tab // ctrl-alt-delete // shift *5 - no results
- Attempted to boot to Low res mode - Same result
- Removed secondary monitor and peripherals
- Ran diagnostics on Memory & Hard drive - Tested Ok
- Ran system restore / System repair from disk
- Checked that Reg key @ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\MySYSTEM \ControlSet00X\Services\RpcSs is set to NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService
- Underclocked RAM - Just in case
- Used RegEdit > load to get access to log files - temporally moved them
- Tried to view events in system32\winevt\logs\ but I can only work with command prompt / note pad so the contents are pretty garbled.
- Swore at computer / threatened computer - Swore at computer while threatening it
I can access command prompt using my windows disk - but i can't seem to do much as most of the system tools use dependencies that aren't loaded yet.
I am completely at a loss - Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. The system is less than two weeks old and has been rock solid up until this point. My husband is running a system with identical hardware / OS, and has not experienced any issues to date.
Obviously I can't rule too much out at this point but I'll also mention that this is a fairly low risk computer as far as malware goes. Less than two weeks since the last install - OS / AV always up to date - no file-sharing or pirated apps.
System specs
- OS: Windows 7 pro 64bit- Version: 61.7600.2.0.0.256.1
AV: Nod-32
Radeon HD5770 Sapphire video card
- Core I7-860
- Gigabyte P55-UD4P Motherboard
- 4GB Ram : 2 X 2GB 240-PIN DIMM 256Mx64 DDR3PC3 -10600 Unbuff
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Edit: Sorry for the lack of updates on this. I'm a bit afraid of reboots seeing that they haven't been going well for me. The problem has been reoccurring with pretty much every reboot although leaving the system off for a while solves the issue regardless of what I leave plugged in.
I removed and reseated the video card yesterday which immediately let me boot. I've done one reboot since and it actually worked although I haven't had the courage to try it again. I will keep updating as I know whether this worked or not.
Thanks again for all of the help- I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
Solution 1:
This Lifehacker article (probably) covers the issue which you are facing. The article gives a link to a fix. But yeah, the whole issue is a little confused at the moment.
the cause of this recent crop of Black Screen appears to be a change in the Windows Operating Systems lock down of registry keys.
However,
According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft hasn't released any updates that could have caused the Black Screen problem described by Prevx, so if you're experiencing this problem, it's very unlikely that it was caused by a Microsoft update.
The fix is to (via task manager- new task)
"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" "http://info.prevx.com/download.asp?GRAB=BLACKSCREENFIX"
Solution 2:
Daemon tools installs a device driver, in order to run images as virtual drives. An incompatible device driver would lead to a crash.
Although the latest version has support for Windows 7, the question is if it has support for x64, or if you are using the latest version (4.35.5).
http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite
Edit: It seems to have support for x64:
http://forum.daemon-tools.cc/f19/daemon-tools-lite-x64-25721/
Solution 3:
Last night after updating a Intel Driver from Windows Update I had something like this happening. POST would pass but after the little Windows Logo all I would get was a black screen.
All I did was restarted my computer and clicked F8. Selected Repair my computer and did a system restore from 3 days.. The one that it created that day before installing didn’t work and neither the one from the day before.
I have Win7 64Bit..
Solution 4:
Regarding your Fix... Perhaps the first time you rebooted the Joystick was connected to a USB port. It probably isn't a failed driver, since you're getting the mouse, which is past the when the drivers get loaded. I would say windows was installing your joystick, perhaps - unless it wasn't plugged in on startup.
PS - decent system, you got there.