Windows 10: When attempting to unlock console, just seeing movable mouse cursor

Well, it's good to try different operations. Hopefully that'll do it for you so not to have to reset. I can tell you're dreading that.

 

Absolutely, although it (or a complete re-install) may be inevitable. I'd be very surprised if a reset would actually work; seems as though Microsoft touts it with every release but it rarely actually works.

Anyways, I wonder if my power plan is the culprit. I just noticed that my Power Options are set to something called "Samsung High Performance (Active)". Not sure where that came from, other than that I have a Samsung SSD (which came with its own software) installed in this PC; I installed the SSD about two years ago; i.e., long before this issue began. I don't want to make any further changes until I see if re-installing the display adapter helped.

 

Could be the power plan not working with the update. I dislike any software that controls any part of the system.

I clean install over reset. I'll wipe the drive clean a few times with Command while in the OOBE phase. It makes for very clean install.

 

I'm not familiar with "Command" or with the "OOBE phase". Care to elaborate?

Beyond the pain after doing a clean install of having to set everything up again ... there's some purchased software titles on this PC that I don't have the installers for and that are no longer available for download. So I'm purposely trying to avoid having to do a clean install.

 

It's not all that difficult. The beginning of the OOBE phase is the first UI screen that appears during the installation process. Here's a member that recently clean installed:

Cannot access the Sound control panel Solved - Page 22 - Windows 10 Forums

 

Thanks. Ah, basically doing a format, but from within the disk partition utility. Nice.

I have the OS on a 500GB SSD and my data on a 750GB HDD -- so I wouldn't have to worry about my data. I would just need to re-establish the permissions on the data drive, re-point Windows libraries to the data drive, etc. But I would still lose the apps that I no longer have (access to) the installers for.

BTW, my primary Windows account is not a member of the Administrators group; I use UAC, where possible. I login with the admin account when changing system settings, etc.

 

Hey ChrisWaters,
Try setting ATI's EnableULPS (Ultra Low Power State) to 0 .... Open Regedit and search EnableULPS, change from 1 to 0 .... Do NOT change EnableULPS_NA ... Forgot, You may need to reboot *Smile

Note: Updating the ATI driver will usually set it back to 1.

 

Formatting and wiping are different. Formatting a hard drive wipes its partition table clean and unlinks all the files in the files system, marking it entirety as writable space. Wiping writes 0's to the drive.

I wipe my OCZ SSD with a program I run off a thumb called OCZ Secure Erase.

 

Argh!!! The problem occurred again last night. The key sequence mentioned above causes the screen to blink and forces the cursor to the middle of the screen; however, the screen remains black.

Applications continue to run:

• I can start Narrator by pressing Win+Ctrl+Enter. This causes the Narrator Settings dialog box to appear (!); however, the rest of the screen remains black.
• I can even use Chrome Remote Desktop to remotely access the PC; but the screen remains black.

I remembered that the screen will sometimes display when the mouse/keyboard is moved later; as of this morning, however, it is not doing so--the screen remains black.

The "Action 1" hyperlink recommends reinstalling the graphics card driver. I've already done that but it hasn't resolved the problem. I'm convinced something has become corrupted and/or a Windows Update broke compatibility with the ATI Radeon HD 4600 graphics card.
At this point, I'm ready to punt and re-install Windows--even though I'll lose a few apps that are no longer available. My only question is: Since Windows 10 shamefully no longer supports the ATI 4600, what graphics card should I replace it with?

Looks like OCZ Secure Erase is for Toshiba SSDs; there's a similar tool for the Samsung SSD in my PC. Since I'm not worried about purging data on the drive, I'm satisfied with formatting (i.e., not wiping) the drive.