Yes I googled and tried already. I read about it before but I have never experinced it myself. Esc+Shift+Ctrl (Task Manager) and/or Ctrl+Alt+Del wont work. Waiting for 20 minutes, nothing changes. Repair fails..."Could not repair this computer" Old Samsung Laptop. (NP300e5a) No restore point, no daily backups, but monthly image based backups with Acronis. Latest image is needed. It happened suddenly, out of nowhere. It is dual boot and Windows 7 still starts fine. I made a new Acronis 2017 image and restored it to another HDD, placed it inside of an old Fujitsu Desktop PC. After recognizing the hardware, Windows 10 booted just fine on the Desktop Computer. So I made an Acronis image of this "now working" Windows 10, restored it to yet another HDD, placing it back into the Samsung laptop. Result: Again, only cursor and black screen...no chance to start Task Manager. Maybe the Samsung laptop itself is the issue. Another laptop will be tested with both images this week. Still, any ideas or recommendations ?
Usually such things are caused by the graphics card or the graphics driver. Typical issue with Windows 10 2004 and older computers.
Adding to this, there were some changes made to Nvidia drivers for 20H1/H2 that I can confirm broke compatibility in certain situations.
He doesn't mention that this Samsung computer uses NVidia i would try to boot in safe mode and remove that video driver.
change disk drive and install windows 10 ltsb on old laptop to avoid driver probleme and disable driver update !
This happened to me many times before in many older versions of Windows 10. As some others are pointing out, this seems to be a nVidia drivers fault. It happened to me on my main PC (with nVidia graphics card), but never happened to my Surface Pro 4 (Intel graphics card). Good luck,
The (old) HDD is working just fine. I now put the Acronis image and the old HDD into a new Lenovo Laptop, V340-17IWL, Model:81RG (Intel HD 600 graphics) Everything works fine, until I install feature update 2004. The black screen is back. So I reverted updates and now it works just fine again. I realized if you google deeper into the Black Screen Issue, it is not just connected to feature update 2004 but it exists since more then 1 year and according to Microsoft, only happens rarely and only on some laptop models. Quite annyoing...ok, lets wait until 2004 is ready then...
It really depends on specific machines/chipsets/CPUs/gfx cards. There is always a bit of research involved. But I love it. I install "up to date Operating Systems" on a lot of different old machines. 5-10 times per month. I dont mind installing Win7 drivers in compatibility mode or soft modify the drivers INF files. Sure, its an adventure sometimes, but usually there are no real issues with the PC afterwards. Should there arise real problems, Ill usually show up here, asking for advice.
You are probably right. A fresh installation can work wonders...sometimes. And yes, this black screen issue is rare, but was existing before the 2004 feature update as well. Rare, but true. And while Id love to do a clean installation of Win10 2004 on the Samsung laptop, it sometimes isnt as simple as that. The Acronis backup of this laptop has way too much data and installed software on it. There is no way (no time) right now to do a re-installation/configuration of all these tools and programs, all linked together via various timers and external machines. But yes, I will grab the Samsung Laptop (NP300e5a) and try a fresh 2004 installation on a separate SSD within the next days, just to report back if the "black screen issue" got resolved or not.
A fresh Windows 10 2004, on a prepared SSD, placed inside of the old Samsung (NP300e5a), did indeed boot up normally. Just the GeForce GT 520 MX has a exclamation mark in the device manager. Good to know, but still, I cant use a fresh installation (right now) as there is too many tools and programs inside of the Acronis image, that would need some days to fully get reinstalled and properly reconfigured.