Boot Issue After 1/13/15 MS Updates

gregrocker said:

Sometimes the drive number assignment cannot be controlled: OS disk not disk 0 - Windows 7 Help Forums

WOW! Thanks for the research. I'll see what happens when I pull the E: drive from the system. BTW, I see 12 updates for Patch Tuesday. I thought WIN7 was done with these. Going to look at them closely and won't apply them until after I've pulled the E:.

1. Pulled the cleaned and formatted E: drive. Problem is unchanged, but the C: drive became drive 0 to Windows (Diskmgmt & Disk Part).
2. Plugged the E: drive back in. Problem is unchanged and the E: drive is now 0 and the C: drive is 1 to Windows. BIOS shows the C: drive on PM0 port 0 and the E: drive on PM1 port 0. The boot sequence is still DVD drive, C: drive:, and E: drive.
3. Tried to change cable sequence, but there is no second plug for the E: drive so it has to stay at the end of the harness. Not sure if this is really an issue from the above references.
4. Individually applied the 13 Windows Updates from Tuesday and Wednesday. This evening, when I returned home after four hours, the system booted properly. I'll give it a few more overnight tries before drawing any conclusions.

Boot up failed again this morning. Same thing. Screen goes dark after the "Windows Starting" message, but before the logo begins coming together. Wait a minute or so, turn the display off/on and get the log on screen, but screen goes dark even if you can select one of the users before it blanks out. Wait a bit, turn the display off/on and get the desktop. Select an icon if you're quick enough and the screen goes blank again. Turn the display off/on and the system is usable. Once this sequence is completed, the system and the display work fine. This only occurs if the system has been off for several hours. The monitor remains on in power saver mode when the system is shut down.

I have run all of the hardware diagnostics with no errors. I have again checked for driver updates with nothing applicable. I ran Malwarebytes, SpyBot, NIS, and MSERT full system scans and got zero hits from all of them. Finally Googled "WIN7 Black Screen At Bootup" and learned that this has been going on since 2010 with varied causes and solutions that appear to be very dependent on many things. Going to start working through some of the ones that sound similar. One thing I did notice was that no one reported that they could get past the Black Screen Of Death by repeatedly turning the monitor off/on like I have been doing. One thing I haven't looked into is the BIOS. Also going to try a different monitor and video adapter, but that will take a while due to limited time.

What driver is installed for your monitor? Did you Enable hardware auto-updating via Windows Update (Steps 3 and 6) to Check for Updates, install all Important and Optional?

I would also uninstall and reinstall the Display driver, in Control Panel>Programs and Device Manager.

If you have a separate monitor and turning it on and off resolves the issue, then the problem is almost definitely the monitor. There is nothing that turning off the monitor will do to reach into your PC - that only affects the monitor. So I would try another monitor.

Yes, the off/on cycle has always shown that the OS continued to boot up even if the display was black or blank. It would just wait at the log on screen and then continue the boot process after I logged on. I've been thinking about trying a different monitor, but haven't gotten my hands on it yet. I did check the driver for the monitor in Device Manager, but it always says the system has the latest driver. It occurred to me that W7 has always labeled it as a Generic PNP monitor ever since installation. Today, I installed the Lenovo L194 Wide driver from Lenovo. W7 now shows this as the attached monitor. It boots and runs fine with this driver, so we'll see what happens tomorrow morning after 6 or 8 hours of down time.

The "cold" boot failed again, so it wasn't the driver that was causing the problem. As soon as I can lay my hands on another monitor, I'll try that. At least I can get the system running with 3 or 4 off/on cycles of this monitor. Still not sure why it works fine once it's been up and running for awhile. It must be a heat related issue with the monitor's circuitry. Thanks for the help so far.

I still haven't be able to lay my hands on different monitor to test. This evening, I left the system on, but powered the monitor off. Came back two hours later. It took three off/on cycles of the monitor power to get the thing to stay connected and display properly. The system had gone into screen saver mode as it should have. It seems to me that this is a heat related issue with the monitor. Turning the power off allowed it to cool more rapidly than if it had gone into power saving mode (the default with this monitor). If this continues to hold true, I guess I need to replace the monitor. I really shouldn't be so cheap over a $200 or less item, but I'd like to know for sure before parting with my money.