Windows 7 Black Screen of Death

TheGrecianHero

A few weeks ago, I got a new machine. Installed Windows 7 Professional and away I went. After about a week, I would get a black screen with a cursor before the login screen. I couldn't figure anything out, after consulting google for hours and hours, and reformated. Couple days ago, it happens again. Reformat. Now it has happened a third time (on my laptop as we speak) and I'm extremely frustrated.

Has anyone had experience with this issue? I've tried all the startup repair stuff and it does nothing, system restores to previous points, etc. When I'm at the "Black Screen of Death", the cursor is responsive, but I cannot use ctrl-alt-del to get to anything, or else I would try that shady Prevx company fix by accessing the task manager.

I'm out of ideas, halp!

fightinfilipino

can you at least get into Windows 7 in safe mode?

my initial thoughts would be either some component in your computer isn't playing nice or some driver isn't playing nice. or possibly both.

TheGrecianHero

I can't actually, I receive the same error.

I did see something about there being a conflict with ATI cards, I have a Radeon 4890. I couldn't find any solutions though short of trying to roll back the drivers. But my question then becomes 1) How and 2) to what/when?

Azio

What software have you been installing on the machine? It's probably caused by an antivirus suite or a server or some other thing that loads at startup, before login

TheGrecianHero

The first time I had AVG, and actually assumed that was it. When I reformatted I installed Avast!, but I'm still getting it.

Other than that, pretty much only basics. Office, Firefox/addons, WoW, CuteFTP, that's really it.

Sorrows End

This shit has been happening to me and I have an Nvidia 285 gtx card.

Fresh install from a brand new drive. Win Ultimate 64.

fightinfilipino

random shot in the dark, but maybe check your BIOS settings and see if your primary hard drive is set to AHCI mode or not?

that caused glitches when i still had Windows Vista installed...setting it to AHCI fixed the problems.

DHS Odium

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/12/01/windows-7-black-screen-of-death-fix/

Try that.

MoSiAc

This is probably out in left field but I get a very similar issue when I have my phone plugged in to my computer and I boot up. it's just a black berry hooked up by USB, but if it's plugged in at boot everything works as normal and then it'll just seize at a black screen until I unplug the phone from USB and reboot.

TheGrecianHero

DHS Odium wrote: »

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/12/01/windows-7-black-screen-of-death-fix/

Try that.

The thing with these solutions is I can't hit control alt delete at the black screen.

I relented and did another reformat. I'll go ahead and try the bios check next time if it happens again though, here's hoping it doesn't. Thanks all.

Torque Monkey

If it happens again, F8>Last Known Good Configuration. It's a silly temporary workaround, but until we get a little bit more information on exactly what is going on(in general with this issue), it's the best option I've run in to.

Has the OS been updated completely when you've experienced these issues?