Solved Win8 Login failure: black screen after typing password

dlanced

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4
Hi,
I've got a one week old Sony Vaio laptop with Win8 that started failing on login. The first symptom seems to have been Firefox failing to load any image files - just raw text. I believe that began right after a reboot. The next attempt to boot failed after the password screen, leaving me with nothing but a mouse cursor and blackness. Lots of blackness.
Running the Vaio troubleshooting wizard hasn't helped, although there is the nuclear option of reinstalling - which I'd prefer to leave as my last choice once all other possibilities are exhausted.
Starting in Safe Mode led to the same black screen and restoring a previous system mount point from the command prompt (rstrui.exe) didn't appear to help either.
One more element to make this even more fun: this all happened in the midst of a successful attempt to add a UEFI Ubuntu Linux dual-boot option. The Ubuntu partition is booting perfectly.
Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Sony Vaio SVF15A16CXB
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ i7-3537U
    Memory
    8GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel® HD Graphics 4000
    Browser
    Firefox

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Education 64 Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus
    CPU
    AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS M4N68T-M V2 µATX Motherboard
    Memory
    8GB 4GBx2 Kingston PC10600 DDR3 1333 Memory
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA Geforce GT640 2 Gig DDR3 PCIe
    Sound Card
    VIA VT1708s High Definition Audio 8-channel Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    22" LG E2242 1080p and 2 19" I-INC AG191D
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024 - 1920x1080 - 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD and 500 GB WD Blue SATA
    PSU
    Thermaltake TR 620
    Case
    Power Up Black ATX Mid-Tower Case
    Cooling
    Stock heatsink fan
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K350 Wave
    Mouse
    Logitech M570 Trackball and T650 TouchPad
    Internet Speed
    80 Mbps Down 30 Mbps Up
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    HP DVD1040e Lightscribe - External USB2

Ok. I'm now pretty sure that I've got an authentication problem. Using ctrl-alt-del at the black screen, I am able to access the task manager and get a command line. From there I can run slmgr which, depending on the argument I supply, will either display my account status or dump me into something like File Manager.
But I'm simply unsure where I can go from here: how do I get back into a normal login? This is a perfectly legal OEM copy of Windows, but it seems to be a bit confused about who its boss is.
Any ideas?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Sony Vaio SVF15A16CXB
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ i7-3537U
    Memory
    8GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel® HD Graphics 4000
    Browser
    Firefox
That's more than I know, sorry. Hopefully someone here can help you sort it out.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Education 64 Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus
    CPU
    AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS M4N68T-M V2 µATX Motherboard
    Memory
    8GB 4GBx2 Kingston PC10600 DDR3 1333 Memory
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA Geforce GT640 2 Gig DDR3 PCIe
    Sound Card
    VIA VT1708s High Definition Audio 8-channel Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    22" LG E2242 1080p and 2 19" I-INC AG191D
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024 - 1920x1080 - 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD and 500 GB WD Blue SATA
    PSU
    Thermaltake TR 620
    Case
    Power Up Black ATX Mid-Tower Case
    Cooling
    Stock heatsink fan
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K350 Wave
    Mouse
    Logitech M570 Trackball and T650 TouchPad
    Internet Speed
    80 Mbps Down 30 Mbps Up
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    HP DVD1040e Lightscribe - External USB2
One more element to make this even more fun: this all happened in the midst of a successful attempt to add a UEFI Ubuntu Linux dual-boot option. The Ubuntu partition is booting perfectly.

May be the issue has something to do with the Ubuntu installation. How did you created the new partition for Ubuntu ?. Letting "Ubuntu" to split "C" drive may cause unpredictable behaviors as Linux NTFS support is still not 100% reliable ( it's based on reverse engineering ). On the other hand , using "Disk Management" to split the "C" partition and letting "Ubuntu" to create it's partitions on the free space is less likely to fail ( in my experience ).

I would suggest booting from a Windows install disc, open a command prompt ( http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2755-command-prompt-boot-startup-windows-8-a.html ) and then running a check disk operation by entering CHKDSK C: /R. Let us know whether it helps you or not.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
May be the issue has something to do with the Ubuntu installation

Thanks. That might well have been a factor. In the end, I took a chance and ran Windows Recovery which got me back into full Windows and, as a major bonus, didn't touch my Ubuntu partitions. I only had to run

bcdedit /set "{bootmgr}" path \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi

again from the command prompt and I even got my dual boot prompt back on restart!
Thanks for everyone's help.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Sony Vaio SVF15A16CXB
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ i7-3537U
    Memory
    8GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel® HD Graphics 4000
    Browser
    Firefox
:thumb: Glad you got it sorted.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 Education 64 Bit
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Asus
    CPU
    AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition Deneb 3.7GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS M4N68T-M V2 µATX Motherboard
    Memory
    8GB 4GBx2 Kingston PC10600 DDR3 1333 Memory
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA Geforce GT640 2 Gig DDR3 PCIe
    Sound Card
    VIA VT1708s High Definition Audio 8-channel Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    22" LG E2242 1080p and 2 19" I-INC AG191D
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024 - 1920x1080 - 1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD and 500 GB WD Blue SATA
    PSU
    Thermaltake TR 620
    Case
    Power Up Black ATX Mid-Tower Case
    Cooling
    Stock heatsink fan
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K350 Wave
    Mouse
    Logitech M570 Trackball and T650 TouchPad
    Internet Speed
    80 Mbps Down 30 Mbps Up
    Browser
    Internet Explorer 11
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    HP DVD1040e Lightscribe - External USB2
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