Black screen during boot-up in Windows 10 for DV6T-6100

[lewist57]

I have a Pavilion DV6T-6100 with i7 @ 2Ghz laptop running Windows 10 x64.

Boot up had always taken a lot of time with the original hard drive, so I just installed a SSD as a replacement to help speed things up.

When booting up, the HP splash screen appears for 2 seconds, then the 'blue window' logo for about 5 seconds. Next the screen goes blank/black for 1 minute 20 seconds. Aftwards, the windows desktop comes up and everything runs quite quickly. This happened with the original hard drive as well as the new SSD.

The basic question is: what is causing this 1 minute + delay during Windows boot-up?

I seem to remember that it can be caused with display drivers, but I see nothing in the BIOS to change, and there are no problems reported with the display drivers in Device Manager.

The laptop is super quick, other than this annoying delay during bootup. Any input appreciated!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

See if unchecking the fast startup in the Power Options menu in the control panel resolves that problem.

I have an old HP 6910p business notebook that I installed W10 on, and it would give me that black screen.

My problem was that it would not get to the desktop at all.

Unchecking fast startup resolved the problem for me.

Boots right up, no delays, no black screen.

Control Panel>System & Security>Power Options>Change What the Power Buttons Do>Uncheck Turn on Fast Startup.

[lewist57]

Thanks for the input, unfortunately it had no effect on startup.

[lewist57]

Fundamentally, it does appear to be a graphics driver problem.

My laptop has two GPUs, neither of which have an official  driver for Windows 10.  When first purchased, it was a dual boot Win 7/Win 8 machine with no lag in booting up. Once it was switched to Win 10, I believe that it is getting 'confused' regarding which GPU to use, and what driver to load. Eventually it figures it out and runs fine after that. Both GPU have Win 7/8 drivers, which work when bootup is complete, but somehow cause the delay at powerup.

But both AMD and Intel web sites say no support for Win 10 for these GPU, so it looks like the delay will stay.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Yes, I would agree with you that the lack of W10 graphics drivers is a problem with the switchable graphics setup, if changing the fast startup setting didn't help.

I don't know if it will make a bad situation worse, but there are W8 drivers for that graphics setup which you can try from the dv6t-6b00.

This package provides the AMD High-Definition (HD) Graphics Driver and Catalyst Control Center for supported notebook models that are running a supported operating system. For notebooks with switchable graphics modes, this package includes drivers for both graphics processing units (GPUs). Switchable graphics enable users to switch between a power-saving graphics mode (normally used under battery power) and a high-performance graphics mode. If high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) video output is supported, this package also installs the HDMI Audio Driver.

9.0.0.0  Nov 23, 2012

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp59501-60000/sp59850.exe

[lewist57 · Accepted solution]

Yes, it is the video drivers.

Changing to the ones you supplied made no difference.

But as an experiment, I disabled the Intel GPU and uninstalled the AMD GPU driver, and rebooted.

The desktop came up almost instantly!  However, the AMD GPU was running on a generic Microsoft video driver with lower screen resolution, plus it complained of no driver for the AMD GPU.  Reinstalling the latest AMD driver and rebooting caused the delay to return.

WORK-AROUND: Apparently if you disable the AMD GPU and leave the Intel GPU running with current drivers, the bootup delay is eliminated. However, the display is not as bright or sharp as the AMD GPU (which might be fixed by playing with settings), but at least the delay (which is caused by the AMD drivers) can be eliminated.