MacBook Pro booting to black screen

[Mr. Glass]

Hello,

I am running Windows 8.1 via Boot Camp and everything has been working mostly fine for the past month or so, since I performed the installation. I would love to use OSX exclusively, but need to run some work applications that are only Windows compatible.

My MacBook Pro Model:
MBP 15.4/2.8GHZ/16GB/1TB
Part Number:MJLU2LL/A

This morning, after using OSX last night, I attempted to restart into Windows 8.1 like I usually do, using the Startup Disk icon in System Preferences. Now, when I attempt to boot into Windows, I will hear the startup sound, see a pinwheel icon (the Windows one) and then a black screen appears and I can proceed no further.

To shutdown or restart, I have to hold down the power button, and I do not receive any indication that I have powered off, unless my external USB keyboard is connected and the lights go out.

This happened once before, a few weeks ago. To solve it, I booted into Safe Mode, restarted, and then everything went back to normal until this morning. I didn't make any changes while in Safe Mode, just booted into it and then restarted, and the problem disappeared.

To my knowledge, all OS updates are current in both OSX and Windows 8.1. None were performed just before this happened either, meaning that I have been able to shutdown, restart, and boot back and forth between OSX and Windows 8.1 since installing any recent updates.

I would really appreciate any advice or links you can provide to fix this issue.

Thank you for your help.

Best Regards,

Glass

 

[patternjake]

Can't really say without some kind of System Diagnostic report. I recommend that you go into Windows Event Log in safe mode and see what you can pick out. Could be anything from a faulty graphics card driver update to a corrupted Windows system file. In my experience from using Windows from its very first inception, anything can go wrong on that OS. If I were you, I'd run it inside a Virtual Machine, or give CrossOver a try. There's no windows app that I use that won't run in CrossOver.

 

[austinpike]

I've lately been having a similar issue, but with Windows 7. It seems to have happened after I connected to an Apple Cinema Display for the first time, and may have installed/updated some drivers. I've been able to get around it by mashing "F8" before Windows loads, which brings up Advanced Boot Options. From there I can select "last known good configuration" or "enable low-res video," either of which gets me into Windows. With "low-res video" the screen briefly pops up at 640x480, then snaps to full res and seems to function as normal.

Another odd thing, is once I get booted into Windows, it seems I can keep booting Windows without issue. It is only once I boot to OSX, then try to boot Windows again, that the screen goes black.

The 640x480 thing indicates to me some sort of driver issue, apparently in conjunction with Bootcamp, as OSX seems to be writing something to the hidden boot partition that is messing up Windows.

None of that may do you any good, as it looks like Microsoft has removed the "F8" option from Windows 8. There is a way to restore it, but it would require you to be booted into Windows. And I have no idea if my Win7 issue is related to your Win8 issue, but given the symptoms and the timing it seems more than coincidental.

Are you still able to get into Safe Mode or is your Windows install now completely DOA? If you can get to safe mode, can you enable the "F8" option?

 

[patternjake]

Sounds more like a graphic driver issue. I'd try booting into safe mode, removing the Mac's graphic driver, and re-install BootCamp, which will restore the stock driver. Turn off driver updates in Windows Update which may be causing you problems.

 

[Mr. Glass]

Hi Folks,

Thank you for your replies. What I ended up doing after some further Google searches was booting into Safe Mode, uninstalling the graphics card driver in Device Manager, then rebooting. When Windows started back up again, it automatically reinstalled the driver, and has been working normally since.


Best Regards,

Glass