Windows 10 black screen after Boot Camp 6 installation

Question

Windows 10 black screen after Boot Camp 6 installation

I installed Windows 10 on my Boot Camp MacBook Pro (a few days before Apple released the Boot Camp 6 update for Windows 10). After the overnight download it automatically installed. This morning I am confronted with a black screen! The brightness buttons had no effect so I thought the machine had crashed.

After a reboot to Windows 10 the initial Windows logo appears and then the screen goes black before I am asked to login. Long story short, I boot into OSX and Google the issue. Nothing really helps but for one site which says that the problem (experienced in 2013 with Windows 7) was that the brightness levels of the display was turned down to 0% after an upgrade on a similar machine (Boot Camp MacBook).

I think it can't be this simple but I unplug the power and find that indeed, after Boot Camp 6 installed last night it turned the brightness level to 0% when the machine is not on battery!

Please apple, sort this out as I could have spent the whole day trying to fix the issue!!!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, Other OS, Windows 10

Posted on Aug 14, 2015 12:09 AM

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Answer 1

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Top-ranking reply

Harshsehdev

Level 1

9 points

Jan 19, 2017 4:03 PM in response to barendfromnsw

It's very simple I've been through same problem.

Just login into mac by holding option key and power on key

Go to settings then display then scaled display and just set it to medium value

You're good to go

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Answer 2

Aug 15, 2015 8:45 PM in response to barendfromnsw

I figured it out...sort of. Not the ideal solution but I had a display port to DVI adapter lying around and when i plugged it into my mac I got something on the monitor. So something is preventing Windows from displaying on the lcd....so plus side is its definitely not broken...bad news is i haven't figured out how to enable to internal LCD yet....hope this sort of helps

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Answer 3

Aug 15, 2015 9:13 PM in response to fraunhofer777

Aaand i fixed it by updating yosemite to 10.10.5 (or something) then when that was done, tried to boot to Windows 10 again and voila, there was something on the display 😉

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Answer 4

Aug 16, 2015 12:44 AM in response to fraunhofer777

Thanks for your feedback! Glad to see you could work around the problem as well.

As you will see in my original post I did manage to solve the problem by just removing the power cable connector from my MacBook. For some reason, when the MacBook's power adapter is plugged in, which is my machine's default state, the display brightness is turned to 0% after the Boot Camp 6.0 installation. On top of this, the keyboard buttons to adjust the brightness do not work at all.

Why would the brightness level be turned down all the way, and the brightness adjust buttons be disabled, when the power cable is connected, but be normal when on battery? Very strange...

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Answer 5

Loner T

Level 9

59,526 points

Aug 16, 2015 6:04 PM in response to barendfromnsw

barendfromnsw wrote:

Why would the brightness level be turned down all the way, and the brightness adjust buttons be disabled, when the power cable is connected, but be normal when on battery? Very strange...

The battery uses an ACPI interface, and if the ACPI driver is not available, defaults are used. The same applies to a power adapter. Device Manager should show you a Microsoft AC adapter and an ACPI device.

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Answer 6

Aug 13, 2016 12:30 AM in response to Loner T

I had the same problem. Turned out that the reason for the black screen was the brightness set to 0% in the Windows 10 power plan:

- Unplug the power cable. This activated the profile "On battery". Luckily, the brightness level in this profile was at 60%, so I could see something :-)

- Being able to see the Windows GUI again, I navigated to control panel and power settings.

- Clicked on "Change plan setting". Set the brightness level in both profiles ("On battery" and "Plugged in") to 60%

- Plugged the power cable back again. And voilà: Windows GUI back again.

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Answer 7

Loner T

Level 9

59,526 points

Aug 13, 2016 5:57 AM in response to GrandSwiss

It is strange that the value is allowed to be zero in the first place. I need to ask Satya Nadella to set the default to be at 50% not 0%. 👿

Bill Gates would have never set it zero. 😉

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Windows 10 black screen after Boot Camp 6 installation