Black screen with cursor during Windows 10 Upgrade

Question

So I've been trying to upgrade to Windows 10 for a week now. I have tried upgrading via Windows Update, through the Media Creation tool's .exe, and through a created media USB.

Most recently, I tried installing Windows 10 through Windows update. It ran through its process (horribly slowly), and I went to bed. When I woke up this morning, it was told me it was ready to restart to complete the upgrade. I clicked the "upgrade now" button or whatever it was, and hopped in the shower. When I got out of the shower, my computer had a black screen with a cursor and a resolution that looked like it was 640x480 or something similarly small.

How can I fix this problem? What should be my next steps to troubleshoot it? I think my next plan of attack will be to unplug all USB devices prior to it turning on next time for the upgrade. Unplugging all secondary drives will be after that. Do these seem like reasonable things to do? Will the setuperr.log contain any information on what may have caused this black screen issue?

My system specs are:

• ASUS M5A99FX Pro R2.0
• AMD FX-8320
• Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1600MHZ (4x4)
• Samsung 840 Evo 250GB (and 3 other drives for games, etc.)
• EVGA GTX 970 SSC 4GB

Secure boot is disabled. Fast boot is disabled. I uninstalled any display drivers beyond the one for my GPU (my motherboard has no onboard graphics), as well as any 3rd party display programs. I made sure to update my NVidia drivers to the one that works on Windows 10. Only one monitor was plugged into the display when the restart happened. Windows update was as updated as it could be. Checkdisk had been run prior to the restart and had dealt with whatever issues it may have found. Region and location were double-checked as matching everywhere in the system. Relevant windows services were set to automatic. My system reserved partition has been assigned a letter drive in case Windows was unable to find it, as I have read up on a few issues where that fixed problems for people. I have tried the keyboard commands to switch display outputs. I have tried keyboard commands to turn on windows narrator to see if I could navigate any menu that might be there. No matter what, there is still the black screen with a cursor. There is no sound. I've read this can be caused by a wifi card; I have no wifi cards.

Once I restart my computer, it will revert back to Windows 8.1 because 10 will not have installed correctly, so I am out of luck no matter what I do at this stage.

A clean install is not possible, and is not preferred. I had a similar issue in trying to clean install 8.1, so I worry a clean install would still give me the same issue, and I can not afford to be without an operating system again. In upgrading previously, I ended up taking it somewhere to save me the headache. I am determined to conquer the problem this time, though.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

After getting home from work, it appears that the best way for me to get past the black screen with the cursor of some unknown resolution was to merely play the waiting game for an undetermined amount of time (it was longer than 20 minutes and less than 8 hours). It's worth noting that this black screen came up immediately upon booting and before the actual "upgrading windows" process with the circle on a black background happened, as there were no drivers that would have been improperly installed at that point.

Additionally, once it did get past that black screen with just a cursor and to the screen with the "Upgrading Windows" title and the circle on a black background, it froze at 25% through the upgrade, with the sub-percentage of "Copying files and drivers" (or something similar) being at 84%. I was able to fix this issue by turning off my computer via holding down the power button on my tower and unplugging the SATA cable from my DVD drive.

I powered my machine back on, and was taken back to the black screen with a cursor. I waited for maybe ten minutes until I was taken to a "Restoring your previous version of Windows" screen, which then took me to another black screen with an improper resolution and a cursor. After waiting another ten minutes, I was presented with the 8.1 log-in screen.

I had to reinstall some drivers for my computer via Windows update (which must have been lost at some point during the upgrade/downgrade process), and then attempted to upgrade to Windows 10 once more. The process took a lot longer than I would have expected for my machine, but by the time I woke up this morning, my computer had successfully upgraded to Windows 10.

TL;DR (1/2): If someone stumbles upon this in the future with a problem like mine (where the black screen with a cursor shows up but nothing else does PRIOR to the "upgrading Windows" circle on a black screen), waiting seems to solve it.

TL;DR (2/2): If, from there, your machine freezes 25% through the upgrade with the copying files and drivers at 84%, turn your computer off and unplug your DVD drive's sata cable. Attempt to re-upgrade to Windows 10 (I did so via Windows Update), and it seems to work.