Windows 7 or Vista won’t start, Computer shows black screen during startup

The black screen you’ve seen is commonly known as the Black Screen Of Death. The name is cool but it sucks. Nobody want to see a black screen on their monitor screen.

Symptoms:

After starting your Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, W2K, W2K3 or W2K8 PC or server the system appears to be normal. However, after logging on there is no desktop, task bar, system tray or side bar. Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window. Even this window might be minimized making it hard to see.

If you have a different symptom, please visit: The Fix for Computer Black Screen on Boot

Causes:

The black screen of death issue was believed to have been caused by updates issued by Microsoft on the November(2009) Patch Tuesday.

Solution:

Security firm Prevx has a fix: If you have these symptoms you can safely try prevx’s freeBlack Screen Fix. It will fix the most common cause we have seen of this issue. Running the fix program is easy under normal circumstances, simply download with your browser using the link above and run the program. However, if you are trying to do this from the PC which has the black screen it is a bit more tricky. In these circumstances follow the procedure below:

1. Restart your PC
2. Logon and wait for the black screen to appear
3. Make sure your PC should be able to connect to the internet (black screen does not appear to affect this)
4. Press the CTRL, ALT and DEL keys simultaneously
5. When prompted, Click Start Task Manager
6. In Task Manager Click on the Application Tab
7. Next Click New Task
8. Now enter the command: “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” http://info.prevx.com/download.asp?GRAB=BLACKSCREENFIX
   Note this command assumes that you are using internet explorer as your browser, if not substitute your browser path and file details for those of iexplore.exe or use the Browser option of Task manager to locate it.
9. Click OK and your browser should start up and begin the download process
10. When prompted for the download Click run, the black screen fix program will download and run to automatically fix the issue.
11. Now restart your PC and the black screen problem will hopefully be gone.

I must remind you that this tool will not fix all black screen issues. There can be many causes. But if your black screen woes began in the last 2 weeks after a Windows update or after running any security program (including Prevx) to remove malware during this time then this fix will have a high probability of working.