So I think I'm going to wait until some better "activation" lol.. and other tools, I mean methods come down the road before I go and reformat my drive! In the meantime, however, if anyone has any other ideas on how I could fix this problem, or happens to know what's causing it, please let me know! I have been running the Windows 8.1 64-bit preview for sometime now without any issues at all... And to all of you who have made suggestions, or tried to help so far, thank you so much
I upgraded my Win 8.1 Pro Preview installation to the RTM and activated it with legal Pro and WMC keys. If the Preview has all necessary drivers and works normally then you could give it a shot. I know that many ppl here frown on doing upgrades but in this case it seems you have exhausted other possibilities. Just make sure you backup anything important in case it fails... badly....
Win8.1 pretty much makes secureboot required if you are using a UEFI capable booting system. Even if you don't use UEFI booting, but simply have the options available. Setup seems to detect and force you to use UEFI boot and secureboot. It's possible that you need to either enable secure-boot or disable UEFI completely and force legacy-only if you wish to keep using dual-boot
Murp.. I do use a UEFI system.. and I believe Secure Boot is enabled in the BIOS... Do I have to enable it anywhere else? Still having the same problem.. But did find a temporary work-around... I boot into the system (Windows 8.1 x 64 Pro RTM), log-in, system logs me out to plain solid-color blue pre-logon screen I re-log on, to a black desktop, press CTL+ALT+DEL, select task manager.. Get the error indicated previously (at this stage it won't run explorer.exe) Run a CMD prompt as administer.. and enter sfc /scannow when that finishes, I can then run explorer.exe from a CMD prompt.. and system works fine.. till I restart (for updates, etc) But for now.. its working as indicated...
Yer the guy dual-booting with UEFI? I really can't offer too much advice that I'm not sure wouldn't hurt your situation. I'm looking into this stuff for my own personal curiosity, but in the meantime you'd be better suited explaining everything you did to your system to get into this mess.
is that so? I think it should be Oldest OS is to be installed first and Latest one to be installed last.
I misspoke and was confused. You can do either. My observations are more about sysprepping, and are in the minority. If you install xp or vista, you need to install them first. In 7 or 8.x you can do them either way. If you don't like the 7 boot screen and want to use the 8 graphical one, you can use bcdboot on your windows directory for the drive that contains 8. If you want to use the old all-text one you can bcdboot your 7 windows directory. I'm not sure how to set things up with UEFI. There seems to be a discrepancy with the efi loader thing needing to be the same for both OS's or something... I'm still looking into it.
This issue appears to have happened to a few people running the 8.1 preview and the RTM. Such as for example: answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1_pr-system/windows-81-preview-x64-black-blank-screen-problem/5dd1de9b-af9c-4e19-a2e5-1e260bd84602?msgId=153ef881-6432-46ac-93ff-346b05ecc5ff My guess is that it has nothing to do with activation since a forced logout is not something that Microsoft does. Instead in my experience forced logouts are the result of a serious crash in Windows or a driver. That particular DLL is used by Metro style apps so one idea might be to de-install any Apps you suspect might have been poorly coded. Also, it might help if you described your hardware in terms of CPU and video...
I actually have ruled out activation, as through trial and error, I actually phone activated my Windows 8.1. However, I am becoming more and more suspicious of my display driver, as It frequently crashes... As for apps, I haven't installed any other then the ones that come preinstalled ... The hardware is a HP Envy M6-1225US, Intel Core i5 3230m @ 2.6 W/ turbo boost (?) to 3.2 Intel HD Mobile Graphics 40000 Appreciate the help... If you have any ideas.. give me a shout! Thanks !!!
- make sure you have the latest video driver and Chipset Install Software from Intel.com - run a stress test program such as Prime95 to make sure you don't have any hardware instabilities
Hi, The same problem here: after successfully upgrading Windows 8 to 8.1 Pro (Official MSDN download - I am a subscriber, slmgr.vbs shows successfull on-line activation, definitelly nothing to do with "licencing"), the system logs me off, after next login only black screen and cursor, need to run sfc / scannow, then explorer.exe and it works until next boot (sleeping / locking does works ok - it is full boot and login that "breaks things"). My system is HP DC5750 SFF: Athlon 64 X2 2.2 GHz, 2GB DDR2, AMD Radeon HD5450 (tried with latest 13.10 Beta 2 Catalyst drivers as well as Microsoft default - no difference), Realtek High Definiton Audio, USB mini Wifi dongle - Ralink, external USB DVB-T Tuner. Does anyone with the same problem have similar hardware?? If this is a driver issue, lets find out what hardware is responsible. Also - Trying to launch "Store" in Metro screen "crashes" (store never opens, switches me back to desktop). I believe that before upgrading there was a number "2" on the "Store" tile (like 2 apps waiting to be upgraded), did anyone else notice this? Other "Metro" Apps (Skype, Weather) work just fine...
EnderW, Have you figured out what's causing this by any chance? As I'm still using the sfc /scannow fix... If you have figured out a solution, please post it here... This is starting to drive me up a wall! LOL Also, Murphy78, I'm running x64 W8.1 intel core i5 2.6 and 8GB ram Again, if anyone has a solution to this issue, please post it here! Thanks guys!