Black screen during boot

Good day everyone. I run Windows 8.1 and I have a problem that surfaced recently. When booting it shows the blue windows logo, showing that it's booting obviously, but after a few seconds it goes to a completely black screen that lasts for anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes before it goes to the lock screen. My system specs are pretty humble I admit, you can look at my specs, but it was never an issue as Windows 8 and 8.1 used to boot completely within 30 seconds max. I suspect it might be a problem with disk space as I have only a 250 GB hard drive with 4 GB free space. The story behind this is, I used to have two hard drives; a 1 TB and a 500 GB. Due to too many power failures in this pathetic country called South Africa, both of my hard drives died completely from too many write and read errors and corrupted partitions. I salvaged the 250 GB hard drive from an old PC of my aunt's as I could not and can still not afford a new hard drive. I hope someone has a solution for this black screen problem. Having to wait 5 - 10 minutes to use my computer is just plain frustrating to say the least. I have already cleaned all of the junk and useless files on the hard drive, what's left on it is all stuff I can't afford to lose or delete.
Thanks in advance and have a pleasant day.

Are you sure it is a black screen and not a time of "No Data" sent to the monitor? On a laptop it will not show the "No Data" but on a larger LCD Monitor it will.

It is normal for Windows 8 to have about 2 to 15 seconds of No Signal between the Initial Purple Logo and the Login Screen.

You have any of these drives plugged in as USB? Or maybe an old Epson or Brother Printer connected via USB?

Try unplugging all not-immediately-used USB devices, like external drives and printers while booting, then connect them back up after it boots, see if that shortens the Blank time. Because I have had a couple of Printers and old USB drives, that would cause the same thing- But when I unplugged em, the system booted in normal amount of time.

Also, with all of the power failures you mention, if this happens while powered up, it is very hard on the drives, a regular CHKDSK will not help, you have to run a full drive scanning utility. I use the ones that are on Hirens Boot CD, link is below, under Dos Programs/Hard Drive Testers. Find out what the makes of your HDs are, and download the proper full drive scanning tool from the maker. GWscan which is on Hiren's can do both WD and Seagate drives but Hitachis or Toshibas have to be done using their own tools.

Dont do the tests unless you know that there will be no power outages, hopefully you can find out if they may happen.

Ah, sorry about that.

If the drives detect, you might want to download Hiren's Boot CD, or ViVard from the net. Hook up the Drives to the main system, and boot to Hiren's. Go into 'Dos Programs" and from there, "Hard Drive Tools". Find "ViVard" on the first page. Or from a Bootable Dos disk with Vivard on it.

If it sees the drives, you have a choice: Run a Scan, or run a Smart Remap. Do the Smart Remap, which can dig the data out of bad sectors, block em off, and revitalize the drive. I;ve done it with about 80 percent success on a dozen or so drives that other programs said were totally dead.

If the Motherboard of your system can detect the BIOS of the Drives, it may still be able to read the drive- But the Bad Sectors can be mapped and blocked off. It takes 4 to 8 hours to run per drive. I'd try it at least, if there is any chance of recovering the Data, that program could do it - Else you would have to pay over a grand from a Disk Recovery place and they don't even bother to organise the data they sift out of the drive. However - If the data is very important and it is within your financial means to bring the drives to a recovery place, I'd do that.

Sometimes if you ask around PC shops and stores, you can find someone who can do a recovery for you for much cheaper, I found one such once.

I don't think I seem to be getting my point across to you, that is, I do not have the drives anymore. I remember trying Hiren's and almost every other hard disk repairing software from various boot CD's and none of them were able to fix either of the two Seagate drives. The 500 GB one stopped being detected at the end. But this is no longer the problem. The problem is the black screen. Let's try to focus on that. Thanks again for your reply and trying to help. :thumb:

It ​might help to run sfc /scannow & Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Here is a tutorial:

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/26512-dism-fixing-component-store-corruption-windows-8-a.html

Hey I heard your point, I was just suggesting how to try to save it, which you did, so good for you. Sometimes you CAN'T save a bad drive, but what I suggested and what you did was one proper way to try to save it.

As far the 10 minute blackout, if it is not being caused by USB, which usually causes it, I got no idea, start by using David's DISM command. Then run SFC /Scannow at least three times after thew DISM is finished.

And go through ALL of your startup programs, list em here, OK? Use cCleaner to pull the list, you can save it as a text file. Sometimes things get hidden from the Startup list on Task Manager, so use cCleaner to grab the list of all processes that start when the puter starts, and include the list of Scheduled Tasks.

Thanks David. I tried what you suggested. First I ran sfc /scannow and it said errors were found but some of them could not be fixed. I then ran Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and it also found errors and successfully fixed them. I then ran the first command again and it said no errors were found. In high hopes I restarted my machine to see if this fixed the problem. Unfortunately it did not. Thanks for the suggestion though.

XweAponX, here are the lists you requested.

Startup

Yes HKCU:Run DAEMON Tools Lite Disc Soft Ltd "C:\Program Files (x86)\DAEMON Tools Lite\DTLite.exe" -autorun
Yes HKCU:Run DriverMax_RESTART Innovative Solutions "C:\Program Files (x86)\Innovative Solutions\DriverMax\drivermax.exe" -RESTART
Yes HKCU:Run KiesAirMessage C:\Program Files (x86)\Samsung\Kies\KiesAirMessage.exe -startup
Yes HKCU:Run KiesPDLR.exe Run Samsung C:\Program Files (x86)\Samsung\Kies\External\FirmwareUpdate\KiesPDLR.exe Run
Yes HKCU:Run KiesPreload Samsung C:\Program Files (x86)\Samsung\Kies\Kies.exe /preload
Yes HKCU:Run Spotify Web Helper Spotify Ltd "C:\Users\Jason\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Data\SpotifyWebHelper.exe"
Yes HKCU:Run uTorrent BitTorrent Inc. "C:\Users\Jason\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent\uTorrent.exe" /MINIMIZED
Yes HKCU:Run Xvid C:\Program Files (x86)\Xvid\CheckUpdate.exe
Yes HKLM:Run Adobe ARM Adobe Systems Incorporated "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\1.0\AdobeARM.exe"
Yes HKLM:Run APSDaemon Apple Inc. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Apple Application Support\APSDaemon.exe"
Yes HKLM:Run avgnt Avira Operations GmbH & Co. KG "C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\avgnt.exe" /min
Yes HKLM:Run BingDesktop Microsoft Corp. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\BingDesktop\BingDesktop.exe /fromkey
Yes HKLM:Run IJNetworkScannerSelectorEX CANON INC. C:\Program Files (x86)\Canon\IJ Network Scanner Selector EX\CNMNSST.exe /FORCE
Yes HKLM:Run KiesTrayAgent Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. C:\Program Files (x86)\Samsung\Kies\KiesTrayAgent.exe
Yes HKLM:Run Nvtmru NVIDIA Corporation "C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\NVIDIA Update Core\nvtmru.exe"
Yes HKLM:Run QuickTime Task Apple Inc. "C:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime\QTTask.exe" -atboottime
Yes HKLM:Run RTHDVCPL Realtek Semiconductor C:\Program Files\Realtek\Audio\HDA\RAVCpl64.exe -s
Yes HKLM:Run ShadowPlay Microsoft Corporation C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\nvspcap64.dll,ShadowPlayOnSystemStart
Yes HKLM:Run SunJavaUpdateSched Oracle Corporation "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Java\Java Update\jusched.exe"
Yes HKLM:Run WinampAgent Nullsoft, Inc. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Winamp\winampa.exe"
Yes Startup Common TotalMedia Server.lnk ArcSoft Inc. C:\Program Files (x86)\ArcSoft\TotalMedia Theatre 6\TotalMedia Server\TM Server.exe
Yes Startup User Folding@home.lnk C:\Program Files (x86)\FAHClient\HideConsole.exe

Scheduled Tasks

Yes Task CCleanerSkipUAC Piriform Ltd "C:\Program Files\CCleaner\CCleaner.exe" $(Arg0)
Yes Task GoogleUpdateTaskMachineCore Google Inc. C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe /c
Yes Task GoogleUpdateTaskMachineUA Google Inc. C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Update\GoogleUpdate.exe /ua /installsource scheduler
No Task Optimize Start Menu Cache Files-S-1-5-21-1460749690-2595896686-2028241587-1001


Thanks to both of you for your assistance.

Black Screen Durning Boot

Irealize this is an old post, but the problem still exist and I wanted topost what I found, because it's a very easy fix for this black screen problemposted. Please not that this is not my fix and unfortunately I can'tremember the fixers name nor the site I was on : ) CRS.

My issue with the black screen was. It wouldboot to show the OEM symbol (HP), then to my name (if using a password, youmost likely signed in), then into the black screen. Mine would hang there forabout, 3 to 4 minutes, (I have read where it was hanging for ten minutes ormore) then it would finally boot to the desktop.
To correct this, type “msconfig” no quotes,into the run window, this will bring up system configuration window, select“services’ and uncheck App Readiness box, should be the eight one down.
You should be good…