Windows 8.1 stuck on blank screen after entering login password...

[DaDude]

My friend's laptop is having a weird issue. He had it for 8 months and suddenly had this issue. He has Windows 8.1. He turns on the PC, the login screen comes up fine and then when he enters his password, the screen is blank with the cursor showing. The cursor can moved with the mouse, but nothing can be done since the screen is blank. We tried doing CTRL+ALT+DEL, but it doesn't work. After we did a hard reset on the laptop, the same problem keeps happening. He gets to the login screen fine, but it hangs on a blank screen after he enters his password.

 

It was working just fine yesterday and all he did was just basic internet surfing. Now, he turns on the computer today and it's blank.

 

Anyone know how to fix this? And most importantly, what the heck caused this sudden problem??

[zhangm Supervisor]

Are there any other users on the machine that he could try logging in as?

 

Have you tried Safe Mode? What recovery options do you have? Tried scanning for disk errors using sfc /scannow? Has the data been backed up yet?

[DaDude]

No, just the one user. And we can't figure out how to boot up safe mode. We did the F8 thingy during bootup, but it won't launch safe mode.

[D!ABOL!C]

No, just the one user. And we can't figure out how to boot up safe mode. We did the F8 thingy during bootup, but it won't launch safe mode.

 

That was one of the fun things I found out about Windows 8 that was kinda annoying. Here is a link to some ways to get into safe mode. One of the methods you can do from the login screen. The others will require a Windows 8 disk or a recovery disk.

[DaDude]

That was one of the fun things I found out about Windows 8 that was kinda annoying. Here is a link to some ways to get into safe mode. One of the methods you can do from the login screen. The others will require a Windows 8 disk or a recovery disk.

 

Excellent, thanks. I'll try it tonight when I visit him. What I will try to do is see if I can get into safe mode via method 2 on that link and do a system restore and hopefully that will solve the issue.

 

It's just weird how this probably happened out of the blue. I wonder if Microsoft released a bad update or something. Because my friend hasn't screwed around with the computer over the past few days and this problem just suddenly happens. And here I thought Windows 8 was supposed to be better than Vista. This problem is just awful!! I have a Vista PC and never encountered something like this.

[zhangm Supervisor]

Since you can access the login screen, hit Shift, click on the power button, and hit restart.

[DaDude]

We were able to access the safe mode through the login screen and we did a System Restore to get the computer back up and running. So, it's working fine now. But the bad news is.... Windows 8 did not create any restore points over the 8 months my friend had the computer. It just had the one restore point from 8 months ago. So, it erased all the programs installed on his laptop. But at least he was able to install everything again, but it took time to do so.

 

But we just hope this doesn't happen again. Like I said, we have no idea what caused this unusual problem so there's no guarantee that this won't happen again...

[devHead]

Interestingly, this has started on my Windows 8.1 PC at work after I log in.  The screen is blank for a full 10 minutes (but with a cursor that I can move around), then the Desktop displays.  Not one of our techs can figure out why it's started happening.

[farmeunit]

Interestingly, this has started on my Windows 8.1 PC at work after I log in.  The screen is blank for a full 10 minutes (but with a cursor that I can move around), then the Desktop displays.  Not one of our techs can figure out why it's started happening.

 

We had a similar issue cause by our AV.

[DaDude]

Interestingly, this has started on my Windows 8.1 PC at work after I log in.  The screen is blank for a full 10 minutes (but with a cursor that I can move around), then the Desktop displays.  Not one of our techs can figure out why it's started happening.

 

Hmm. Did this just happen now? If so, I'm wondering if Microsoft released a very buggy update.

[Anibal P]

We had a similar issue cause by our AV.

 

Weird, yesterday work pushed an AV update that was causing Win7 to not connect to the net, on average it took some 4-6 reboots to get it to connect

[devHead]

Hmm. Did this just happen now? If so, I'm wondering if Microsoft released a very buggy update.

No, it happened about a month ago.  Of course, I moved work locations, but our PC/LAN team did everything to make sure it logged on successfully.  They can't imagine why it would be acting like this.  I chalked it up to being in a new location, but who knows.