Screen stays black after update...

[Kamran Samaie]

I don't know what happened... I came home and saw that there is a new update and hoping it would fix the heating issue I have since I updated last time, I did it.

After the update, I restarted my surface and everything was normal. It turned on and I got to enter my password in the lock screen and after that the screen stays black. It is turned on, but I can't see anything...

The Windows button makes it usual sound when I press it and I can even turn out Microsoft narrator, but no matter what I do (I mean there isn't much to do except restarting) it stay black...

Did anyone experience the same issue or does anyone know a fix for this?

Since it works fine until I unlock the device after restarting I assume the hardware is fine, it has to be a software problem, but I don't know how I can undo it...

Edit: Hooking it up to my TV did not help... But if I start narrator in the bottom left corner something shows up related to narrator, pressing enter will even maximize it, so it is half the screen and it is displayed just fine. But for some reason it is the only thing I can see...

 

[kundas1]

sorry to hear that, try this and see if it fixes it Hold the Power Button down for about 20-30 seconds, wait 10 and then hold the volume rocker up then press the power button....

 

[Kamran Samaie]

sorry to hear that, try this and see if it fixes it Hold the Power Button down for about 20-30 seconds, wait 10 and then hold the volume rocker up then press the power button....

now I can access some settings (boot order and stuff), but that only confirms it is not the screen or anything, simply the update somehow ruined my windows... Or is there anything I can do here?

 

[kundas1]

dont touch anything just restart it it should be back to windows

 

[Kamran Samaie]

doesn't change anything for me, I get the same result.

How can I start to safe mode from USB? I tried pressing ctrl + F8, fn + F8, ctrl + fn + F8, esc + backspace, esc + del and ctrl+alt+del but nothing worked... It should be possible via usb, but how? The boot order is set to be network->USB->SSD

Edit: Ok pressing and holding the shift button before choosing restart helped me into safe mode, trying to refresh it now, maybe that will help before I have to reset it

Edit2: Where can I find the recovery key for my device?

 

[Eric G]

Same exact situation for me today. Login-->black screen. Power on, screen on, display black. nothing works. Tried the 1 button restart, the two button restart. Same result.

Machine is less than a month old, and just stops working? I've got like 5 days left to return this, and since this is my work machine for a business, I may have to return it. I liked it (LOVED) it before today, but right now, it's just a paperweight, a two thousand dollar, brand new paperweight. Unacceptable. My experience at the Microsoft store will determine if I walk back to my car, or walk over to the apple store later today....

VERY disapointed.

 

[Trax123]

Let me know if you come across a fix for this. A client of mine is having an identical issue on his Surface Pro 2 that started last night. Surface boots to the login screen, screen immediately goes black after logging in. It's attached to our corporate domain, I tried with multiple user accounts and all have the same problem.

 

[Danielo290881]

Think i cant really help but i had this exactly some time ago on a notebook. I had it attachached to an external display. After i didn't it attach anymore to an external display it worked.

 

[Eric G]

Ok, found a solution, sort of. Turns out the explorer.exe file was corrupted. No idea how.

If you hold down the volume button at start up, restore and recovery options appear, and you can reset or restore the machine.

Might be a similar issue on the surface 2, but I'm not sure how to get to the boot options for that device.

 

[Robert Kliaman]

I had the same thing happen to my Surface on Monday after the update. I took the machine to the Microsoft Store yesterday and the Microsoft technical support representative stated that he had seen a significant amount of the same issues with other machines over the last couple of days and that the issue had been elevated to more senior support people at Microsoft. He said he had tried to restore one of the other machines and it hadn't worked (possibly not a long enough back "restore point"). He had also stated that he had tried to solve the issue with multiple techniques without success. In the end he had recommended resetting Windows, the end result of is that you have to reinstall all of your after market programs. I am going to try back at the Microsoft store in a week to see if they have a resolution before I reset the Surface Pro 2.

 

[Eric G]

Reset worked fine for me. I did find that the process is relatively painless, full restore was under 15 minutes. The pain is in having to reinstall your apps. Based on my experience, I have inserted a 64g memory card, and my application files are saved to the card so I can reinstall at will. My adobe products are 8g, which is a painful download, so now the install files are on the card so I can do a restore without having to download everything again. Probably will place my office install files on there too if I can, although they installed pretty quickly from the web. My data is in Dropbox and OneDrive, so I lost nothing, except for installed programs.

This all means I'll never have this happen again of course.

 

[malberttoo]

This all means I'll never have this happen again of course.

Yes, but now you're more experienced to better help someone else!