A few months ago, I was using some sort of program that ran as a service and did zero patching to the system files in order to run custom themes on Windows 8. A few Windows updates went by, and I was given the "black screen with blinking cursor" of death. I've figured out that using custom themes in conjunction with this program resulted in me often getting this problem whenever I'd do windows updates. Is there any sort of alternative? Is there something I was possibly doing wrong? I've seen others with the problem, but I've yet to find a fix. Thanks for the help.
I've suffered from that problem until a kind soul at this forum shared his patcher with me. ultrauxthemepatcher won't touch your dlls, it will just do a backup of them and uxstyle gives the blank screen as you said. Until now, using his patcher, I didn't encounter any problems. Search this forum for woot nickname and ask for his permission.
I've heard just the same as UxStyle, UltraUXThemePatcher will also cause it. (even more so because it patches the files!) I'm probably not even going to bother =) I know the Windows 8 RP theme can run on RTM without any patches -> can that cause the black screen issue too? Thanks.
I just got the Black Screen issue myself using UxStyle, glad I made a System Restore Point ( and it actually worked ), but bummed about not being able to use themes. Think I may give it a go inside a VM to see if the issue happens everywhere. This happened on my Win 8 x64 Pro box that already had all updates installed, Black Screen happened immediately after applying the theme and after every reboot until I restored to the SRP. If anyone knows of a work around I'd love to hear it, willing to do some testing to see what sticks.