Black Screen, No Taskbar, No Menu

DarthD302 · February 12, 2015

Earlier this evening I restarted my computer figuring I haven't done that for a few days, and suddenly upon rebooting and logging back in there was nothing. Just a big black screen. Normally the Windows 8 menu comes up, but not this time. I managed to get the Task manager open and searched explorer for anything relating to the problem. Everything almost seems fine. I can open skype and talk to people, use the internet (as I am now), and I have half a mind to try even playing a game, though I'm not in the mood any longer after finding this problem. One of my friends was walking through with me trying to figure out what went wrong and where, we uninstalled the latest update from a few days ago, we tried opening in safe mode (didn't happen, wouldn't work), and we've gone though every file and every way to troubleshoot. The last resort we have is to uninstall Windows 8.1 and reinstall Windows 8 which could potentially erase all of my personal files. We're not even 100% sure if it works. We want to know if there's a better solution.

EDIT: As I was typing all this it popped back to normal all of a sudden, however should this occur again if anyone knows a better solution please do let me know. Any and all help is appreciated, thank you.

JeffreyEagan · February 12, 2015

It sounds like DWM is getting a bit slow.

superducky94 · February 12, 2015

It's 99.9% probably a windows update, I work as a computer technician and we have been seeing this A TON lately. People do updates and this happens when one of the more recent ones don't install properly. The easiest fix is doing a reinstall. Backup your files to another drive and reinstall, it really is not worth the time and effort to figure out which update caused the problem. We have spent so much time trying to figure out what update does it and it isn't always the same update. You certainly may try and figure it out, but the quicker solution, at least from my perspective, is just going with the reinstall.

EDIT: Just saw the edit, first time I heard of that happening, good for you haha. My initial advice still stands for others who encounter the issue.