windows boots to black screen with cursor

aeh2010

Reputable
Aug 30, 2014
1
0
4,510
So my pc will only boot to a black screen with cursor in normal mode. Safe mode works and I can also boot in normal when I go to msconfig and select diagnostic startup so its leading me to believe its a program that is causing explorer.exe to boot incorrectly.

Is my only option to go through each program on my stattup list to try and find which is causing the problem?

Additional info: the following did not work - system restore, boot with low graphics, roll back the display driver, ran virus scan in safe mode and removed anything it found
 
More usually it's a bad third-party driver that forces Windows in to "safe mode", rather than an application, unless an application installs it's own drivers (eg third-party firewall, antivirus, cd/dvd burning software & utilities).

Try to remember what you installed or updated last, just before this problem was first noticed. That will be what you need to uninstall.