Black screen after boot up

[leem1988]

I get a black screen after I boot up my PC.  I was told that the BIOS would need to be updated, but there is no download for Windows 10 OS. So which download should I choose? Thanks.

[Grzwacz]

Greetings leem1988,

Welcome to the forum.

I am not an HP employee.

There is a BIOS update for your PC when running W7. The BIOS update is circa 2012. You would not be able to apply this update if your PC cannot load the OS and you are using W10.

Your PC was released for sale in 2011.

Your PC appears to be unable to POST. This observation may or may not be correct. But it is based on the limited amount of detail you have provided.

I would guess you have a hardware problem (your PC is around seven years old). The problem could be something easily corrected up to your MB has failed.

Please provide more details.

Any signs of life when you start the system? LEDS on the tower, HDD whirring sounds, CD/DVD initializing.

What is the status of the power supply LED. It should be solid green.

Regards

[leem1988]

Hi Grzwacz,

The system powers on. Then a blue windows logo appears for a few minutes. After that, the screen goes black, and nothing else appears on screen.

[Grzwacz · Accepted solution]

Hi leem1988,

Thanks for more info.

You can't use a W7 HP BIOS update when running W10.

The BIOS update is probably not relevant to this situation because this update was released by HP in 2012.

You have some life left in the PC. This problem could still be hardware related but we can't rule out a driver problem on W10.

Do you have any offline OS backups you could use to reimage the OS?

Did you make a W10 Recovery drive?

Do you know what version of W10 you are now running? Version 1803 is the latest and has been causing problems similar to what you are seeing.

You may have to reinstall W10 clean if you don't have any OS backups.

You could try going to this Microsoft site. Download the Media Creation Tool.

Then create a bootable DVD installation disc with the version (probably 64 bit, W10 Home Premium) of W10 you are using.

Boot to the DVD. Select Repair. Select Advanced Options. Try a system restore, try a system image recovery if you have one.

You are between a rock and a hard place.

This gets complicated. You may have to do a clean W10 install.

Do you have data backups? You may have to pull the HDD, install in a different PC as a data drive to get your stuff before you try a clean install.

The install might fail if you have any hardware issues that are at the root cause of this problem.

Best wishes. I hope you can get this sorted out with success.

Regards

[leem1988]

Thanks I will try to  create a bootable DVD installation disc. Hopefully that will solve the problem.

[Grzwacz]

Hi leem1988,

You're very welcome.

Get back with results.

There are so many variables involved with your dilemma.

The W10 version available for download at the Microsoft site is the latest.

It may not allow any recovery options if you are using an earlier version of W10.

I really don't know what will happen.

I have not yet been in your situation because I don't recommend updating PCs when the OEM does not provide W10 driver support. Newer versions of W10 are not playing well with older hardware when there are no drivers available from Microsoft. Microsoft is slowly eliminating support for legacy hardware.

You may have to go back to the HP factory operating system if W10 1803 is the problem. Hardware problems will be eliminated as a possible cause if W7 installs and runs correctly.

You could run W7 until January 2020. Then you may have to buy a new PC.

Regards