Windows knows best – Forumite.site

This topic has 7 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago by Wheels-Of-Fire.

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June 4, 2018 at 4:59 pm #21547
Wheels-Of-Fire
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@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
Good one this morning, Windows has made a unilateral decision that I no longer need a display. I get a blue flag with the spinning dots but then nothing but a black screen with a mouse pointer. Windows has loaded because if I click where things should be I get the sounds I expect to hear and the disc activity light but there is nothing to see on screen. I have booted into safe mode ( I think, hard to tell) but the result is the same. Refreshing the screen with Windows+CTRL+shift+B does nothing and neither does Windows+B. CTRL+ALT+Delete brings up a brief spinning doughnut but that’s all and I assume it thinks its displaying a dialogue box.

All was fine when I switched off last and there was no sign of any updates so I haven’t a clue what happned.

Before I restore the system from a 2 month old backup does anyone have any ideas ?
June 4, 2018 at 5:58 pm #21548
Wheels-Of-Fire
Participant
@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
I have now looked at all the possible solutions I can find on the internet and none of them apply because my system is booting and loading the explorerer.exe shell. The display and its connections are fine because I get the blue flag and safe mode with VGA drivers dosn’t get me a desktop either so I don’t think its a driver issue.

It looks as though Windows has got its knickers in a twist about where to project a screen because I had it set up to duplicate the output but now the mouse pointer acts as it would with extended displays. As I ment to say above Windows+P does me no good though.
June 4, 2018 at 7:07 pm #21551
The Duke
Participant
@sgb101
Forumite Points: 5
There must be button combo to turn on Windows talk back (the thing that talks you through everything the mouse pointer hits ) to aid the blind.

Try turning that on, then moving the mouse to the display settings and mess there.

Or/and

As you can see the monitor, having a laptop open next to the PC monitor to aid your search for the display settings.

I don’t envy your task.

If you get no look with the display settings, roll windows back to yesterday.
June 4, 2018 at 7:17 pm #21553
Ed P
Participant
@edps
Forumite Points: 39
What happens if you just give it a power cycle?

If you have set up a restore point I’d use that.(System Protection->System Protection->Advanced Settings etc) Supposedly this does not always work, but I’ve found that failures are rare and the results are MUCH better than a dated restore.
June 4, 2018 at 8:31 pm #21557
Wheels-Of-Fire
Participant
@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
Its all very tricky because I just can’t get any sort of display. I can’t find a Windows 10 image DVD either, even though I know I have at least 2 somewhere. I am going to my mothers tonight so I will download and burn a new image then. When I have the disc I will try to boot into the recovery enviroment and see what I can do from there. I have a nasty feeling that system restore was disabled when I did my last clean install but I will have a look.
June 4, 2018 at 8:38 pm #21559
Wheels-Of-Fire
Participant
@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
Oh I forgot ed, I powered the system off and on several times and I even did a forced shutdown 3 times in a row during startup as sugested online.

This caused windows to tell me it was entering start up repair before giving me another black screen !
June 4, 2018 at 10:31 pm #21563
Wheels-Of-Fire
Participant
@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
I still haven’t fixed my display because im not back at my flat yet but I have been looking at the Windows recovery enviroment (Windows RE). Aparrently if you use the media creation tool to directly create a new image on your hard drive then it installs windows RE on a partition that appears as X: while you are in a recovery command prompt. If this is the case then you can access Windows RE by hitting F11 during a system boot.

If you install windows by running setup from physical media you do not get Windows RE installed so you have to boot from your Windows disc.

I am not sure how true this is but I installed Windows 10 on my mum’s PC from a DVD and there is no sign of a recovery partition and F11 does nothing.
June 5, 2018 at 12:39 pm #21575
Wheels-Of-Fire
Participant
@grahamdearsley
Forumite Points: 4
Fixed it ! I thought I would give Windows+P another go before I did anything more drastic and after pressing it 5 or 6 times I suddenly got a display but only on my TV. The settings had changed to extend desktop but it wasn’t extending so i changed it back to duplicade and i now have the same display on my TV and monitor ?
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