Most users today face the issue of black screen while installing Windows 8 upgrade. This has now become very common and almost every user upgrading to Windows 8 encounter this problem. After booting Windows 8, a black screen appears either for a split second or for few minutes; sometimes even longer. The flickering/black screen is usually seen after installing drivers on Windows 8.
The root cause of this occurrence is because the Windows update could have performed an installation of a release driver 304 at the background that requires a reboot to complete the installation. After the installation of another release driver 310, the system is again rebooted; this results in a clash between the two release drivers binaries resulting in a flickering/black screen. To avoid this problem, reboot the computer before the installation of release 310 driver. Alternatively, the driver status can be checked under device manager. The system can be rebooted if the device manager indicates a re-start. Then, the driver can be installed.
In case, if a user did not perform the reboot process before installing the driver and encounters a black screen, the following can be followed:
Sometimes, then black screen appears during the mid-way of the installation. Even if users have created repair disks before upgrading to Windows 8, it automatically goes back to the last OS from the where the Windows 8 upgrade started. Unsuccessful installation takes the user back to previous Windows screen. Sometimes, even if the release drivers are found compatible with Windows 8, the black screen could appear. In such a scenario, updating the Basic Input/Output system (BIOS) could prove helpful.
The black screen could appear due to other reasons such as application failure due to display and graphic issues. Since Desktop Window Manager (DWM) is found on Windows 8, the applications of the older versions have the possibility to fail due to mixed mode graphics. In such cases, the Windows will quit the installation and will draw a black screen on the desktop.
Users can start the Windows 8 on safe mode and then download different drivers to check if that could fix the black screen issue. This also depends on the machine. In case of Dell or HP, users can log on to their respective websites and download the latest driver provided for Intel HD graphics. In case, if users still continue to face issues even after downloading drivers from the manufacturer’s website, then the drivers can be directly downloaded from the Intel website itself.
If a user is unable get the system into safe mode, then try connecting the system via an external display such as VGA and HDMI. The other techniques that can be tried include disabling the Intel HD and booting Windows 8 or just perform a disk clean up to remove the temporary files and then boot Windows 8.