The black screen of death is a critical system error that causes your computer screen to display all black. The system error forces your operating system to shut down because it can no longer safely function. The black screen of death can be caused by several factors, including hardware or software issues, or malware.
You can get a blank or black computer screen on startup, while updating software, or in the middle of device usage. Sometimes you can resolve a black screen on Windows 10 or 11 by rebooting your device. But in serious cases, you may need to perform a system restore or reinstall the operating system (OS).
If your PC or laptop displays a black screen on startup, try disabling some startup apps to optimize your boot. AVG TuneUp lets you turn off all non-essential applications and put them to sleep automatically. Its built-in Sleep Mode feature helps you get the most out of your RAM and CPU power so you have the resources you need at startup.
If your otherwise fully-functioning Windows device suddenly displays a blank screen, check your computer cables connected to your monitor. There could be an issue with the connection or the actual cables.
Your monitor display might be defective or set to the wrong source, which can also lead to a black screen. Try connecting to a different display if you have one. Or move from your monitor to your TV (or vice versa).
On a bigger desktop computer, try removing all unnecessary components, like sound cards and extra RAM (random access memory) sticks. If you still see nothing on your screen after startup, switch out the graphics card and upgrade your RAM completely.
Find an entry that says Load defaults (or Optimized defaults or something similar). Depending on your device build, BIOS/UEFI looks different. But the general wording of the entry should be similar. Selecting this option resets everything back to default settings.
You can also check your BIOS/UEFI performance by running a CPU stress test. If your computer fails the test and causes the black screen of death, your BIOS/UEFI drivers might be outdated. You can easily update your drivers with one of the best free driver updaters on the market.
Hit Next, then wait for Windows to restore all necessary files and return to working order. In some cases, you might need to reinstall an application or an update that you installed after the restore point and before you got the black screen on Windows.
Now, reboot your Windows system normally. If the black screen is gone and everything is working, perform the steps above in reverse order, re-enabling one task at a time. In other words, enable one item in Task Manager, reboot, and ensure everything works. Then, repeat the process with the next item on the list. This process will help you identify the program preventing your system from rebooting.
Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete simultaneously and select Task Manager. If the black screen prevents you from getting to Task Manager, follow the steps above on how to boot into Safe Mode.
A strong antivirus program like AVG AntiVirus FREE will scan your machine from top to bottom to find any malicious code. And it will delete the malware and set up defenses to help detect and block any future signs of trouble.
If you get frequent (and seemingly random) Windows black screen issues, your graphics driver could be the reason. Make sure to update all AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA drivers regularly so that your graphics card works properly. Check out our detailed instructions on how to update your graphics drivers and our guide to monitoring GPU performance.
Fixing a black screen on Windows is relatively simple, but maintaining a properly functioning device is key to avoiding future issues. Use AVG TuneUp to keep your WIndows device updated, optimized, and running smoothly.
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The Ubuntu installer's startup portion is sometimes incompatible with certain graphics cards. Fixing it and getting to the Ubuntu Desktop to try or install it can often be surprisingly easy fix: the nomodeset parameter. To see if it works for you:
Ubuntu's installer 'when attempting to run in UEFI mode) will hang and stop due to different manufacturer's implementations of the UEFI specification and will hang in different ways.To identify if your machine is booting in installer UEFI mode you will see
The picture above actually only confirms your DVD/USB booted using UEFI and there will be some means in firmware settings to ensure drives are booted in order to make the UEFI installer run (a solution may possibly be as simple as ensuring SATA is set to AHCI) - check your vendors manual! Also check the UEFI Community Documentation Section 2.3 for more details.
What you need to do first is to disable SECURE BOOT in the firmware settings. If that does not get the Ubuntu installer running, try disabling anything mentioning UEFI in the firmware settings.Or
If you cannot find UEFI settings then enable CSM - this will disable the UEFI booting of the installer and then allow a legacy/BIOS install of Ubuntu.
Installing grub-efi afterwards will allow UEFI to be re-enabled. Again refer to UEFI Community Ubuntu Documentation at Section 4
Not all of these machines implement Secure Boot. Simply selecting UEFI in the BIOS settings will configure UEFI mode on hard drives. There is no solution for these errors and the workaround is to disable UEFI to enable the Ubuntu installer to run in legacy mode; after which boot-repair can be used to install grub-efi which then allows/needs UEFI switched back on before Ubuntu will boot using UEFI. Once again refer to the UEFI Community Ubuntu Documentation at Section 4
This usually happens because you have an Nvidia or AMD graphics card, or a laptop with Optimus or switchable/hybrid graphics, and Ubuntu does not have the proprietary drivers installed to allow it to work with these.
If you have a purple screen (maybe you need to set the nomodeset-option also?) and you have encrypted your complete Ubuntu installation, try to just type your encryption/LUKS-password after waiting some seconds (or minutes, just to be sure) and continue with a press on Enter. If this is successfull, you should see your Login-screen just a few seconds later.
After selecting boot options you have the opportunity to edit the boot flags manually using your keyboard. Replace quiet splash with no splash to get an idea of what step your system is failing at. Using that information search the forums or the internet for answers from the community.
The Default Ubuntu Way involves just typing in the terminal sudo apt-get install nvidia-current (For the current normal drivers) or sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates (For the latest current drivers). Just pick one.
the PPA way has the Latest bleeding bloody edge drivers. I mention this one since I am testing it in some use cases that relate to problems using TVs and 16:9/16:10 resolutions. To install this one do this:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa and press ENTER to accept a message you will receive. Then do sudo apt-get update. Lastly do sudo apt-get install nvidia-375. Note that you can not mix this one with the Ubuntu way. One will overwrite the other one.
Now if you happen to have any problems do the following via the terminal again but this time go to your home folder. In my case it is /home/cyrex, so I would cd /home/cyrex. In your case you should change that to your user and the apply the following:
What we did there was remove the monitors.xml to solve some resolution problems, remove the .nvidia-settings to fix some Nvidia config problems and remove the xorg.conf (Which is not really needed in the latest Ubuntu versions) to remove any badly configured options.
I had this problem last night. All of a sudden my system wouldn't boot up anymore. BIOS check would finish, then it would just hang there on a black screen with the cursor flashing. Left it there for several hours just in case. When that didn't work, I unplugged all my USB devices and all of a sudden it booted up fine again. I haven't narrowed it down exactly, but in my case it was either my USB hub or the iPod plugged into that USB hub that was causing it to hang.
To complicate things, since Ubuntu 11.10 there are two distinct methods to install with Wubi. The first way is using the Desktop ISO, which applies to all sub-flavours (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Mythbuntu etc.) and also if you downloaded the Ubuntu ISO yourself.
Ignore Safe graphic mode as it applied to Ubuntu in 2008 and does nothing for the modern nvidia/radeon issue. Place your cursor on Normal mode and press E. Then edit the entry and insert nomodeset as shown here (look for it between noprompt and quiet splash in the middle; note there may be some other differences but don't change anything else - just add nomodeset):
NOTE: This only applies to the Installation; the next time you boot you have to override it again, and for this it will be the same as for a normal install (answered above). Make sure you hold Shift to make the Grub menu show though.
Method 2When you run wubi.exe standalone and install Ubuntu (not a sub-flavour), it downloads a pre-installed, compressed disk image with a default Ubuntu install, and then decompresses this to the size of the virtual disk. There is no grub.cfg setup yet so it uses the file \ubuntu\install\wubildr-disk.cfg for the first boot which you can edit and add nomodeset:
Note - if you've come to this thread after booting for the first time, it's possible that the grub.cfg has already been created (even if it froze up). In this case, editing the \ubuntu\install\wubildr-disk.cfg file will do nothing - it always checks for /boot/grub/grub.cfg inside the virtual disk first. So you should follow the instructions for the normal install above.
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