Black Screen of pain

Windows 8.1

Acer Aspire TC-120

yukyukyuk

Black screen after I log in. I can see the mouse cursor yadayada.

Interesting thing is if I just let the computer sit there long enough, say maybe an hour. It suddenly clears up.

Also nice that I can get the task manager and right click open file location on anything and then I can navigate to the WIndows update and other control panel items plus even find things on google chrome.

But that hasn't helped me solve this.

I have tried deleting the fntcache.dat file in windows/system32

I have tried deleting /uninstalling the display driver (altho it likes to put it right back immediately so I am unsure if that worked correctly.

I have tried uninstalling from the list of bad updates that they think caused this.

When I first got it I did a system refresh and it went away.

BUt now I"ve been using it a little. I REFUSE to do that again. I am not going to be forced to reinstall ALL of my software every time I startup my computer.

Please help get rid of this it is soooo annoying.

Accepted answers

IronFly

http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers/5409;-;Aspire%20TC-120

here are the official ACER drivers but if your Radeon is an add-on, the best place is the AMD website.

there are no special steps than:

1) check on Program and features if your display drivers are listed and uninstall

2) go to Device manager, click on display adatpers, right click on your Radeon and choose uninstall

Then reboot and see if the black screen issue is solved, then re-install AMD VGA drivers.

All comments

IronFly

I can suggest you a trick to prevent windows to install windows update drivers automatically, this prevent windows to automatic update VGA drivers that can create the black screen issue.

windows key logo + x

click on control panel

click on Devices and printers

right click on your PC name

choose device installation settings

choose No....

choose never install....

tick Automatically....

Click on Save changes

About your actual black screen, normally uninstalling the display adapter from the device manager fix it, but you must check also on programs and features if the display drivers are uninstalled.

CrimsonFox

You DO mean uninstalling then reinstalling a new one from the AMD site right?

I did do the "prevent autoupdates thing already yeah.

But that makes me very angry too. It means that I will never be able to update again without this coming back.

Anyway can you give me the step by step for what I have to do for the driver thing?

And where is the best place to get it?

AMD Radeon HD 8670D is the card.

IronFly

http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers/5409;-;Aspire%20TC-120

here are the official ACER drivers but if your Radeon is an add-on, the best place is the AMD website.

there are no special steps than:

1) check on Program and features if your display drivers are listed and uninstall

2) go to Device manager, click on display adatpers, right click on your Radeon and choose uninstall

Then reboot and see if the black screen issue is solved, then re-install AMD VGA drivers.

CrimsonFox

Didn't work. I tried 3 different driver sources too. ready to throw this computer away. I so hate you microsoft

CrimsonFox

WOWOWOWOWOWOW! IT WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Idon't know why but it didn't work last night when I tried it so I shut the whole thing down.

THis morning when I booted up it went STRAIGHT to my wallpaper and icons instead of black screen!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Thank you bro! thankthankthankyouyouyou!

So the issue at least for ME was the fact I THINK that I am using VGA monitor. I am not using HDMI. Just regular VGA monitor. Whatever driver they had loaded it didn't seemed to like. It didn't seem to like the AMD omega whatever driver either. I ran AMD's diagnostic tool and it recommended this AMD omega driver for my system.

But I think maybe the VGA might have been what it disliked. So I went to this site and downloaded the driver acer recommended for AMD VGA it worked.

So procedure,

download the acer recommended driver (AMD VGA in this case) and put it in a convenient place (like Downloads or Desktop)

GO to Device Manager and uninstall display driver

Manually install new driver from the directory you put it on (this included expanding, extracting files and running the setup program, etc)

SHUT DOWN THE SYSTEM COMPLETELY (not just restart)

TUrn power back on.

I DID do others things before which may or may not have affected this. All of these things were recommended as a solution fo black screens...

1) deleted the /windows/system32/fntcache.dat file. I also checked the registries to make sure the things it told me about weren't there. (full path fonts ending in odt)

2) Turned off hybrid (fast) startup

3) Changed my Windows Update settings to manually update instead of autoupdate.

4) uninstalled the Windows Updates that were listed as being problem children for this. (there is a list of 8 (1 + 4 + 3 others). A lot of the patch things here involved windows fonts as well as a major 8.1 thing too.

But anyway none of the above mattered until I changed the display driver. I might now try can reupdate things one at a time altho my updates didn't seem to work yesterday. Maybe that's fixed itself too.

Anyway I hope this helps someone else too.

IronFly

You welcome. Smiley Happy

CrimsonFox

Yeah this was just one of those major annoying problems that doesn't have one solution. Or rather has come up in many places and has different solutions for different people.