Windows 8.1 Problem

I am experiencing a similar issue. Windows 8 was installed and working fine, but when I upgraded to Windows 8.1 I began experiencing a black screen issue. Once I start up into the Boot Camp option, it gives me the normal Windows startup logo for a few seconds - everything seems normal. But before I reach what normally would be the login screen, the screen goes black (not just nothing appearing on the screen, but like the screen is turned off all together). Sounds still play (I hear the Windows startup jingle) but the screen seems to be off completely.

Would welcome any suggestions. I tried booting into safe mode but from what I can tell (I hope I am wrong) Windows 8 doesn't allow that unless you enable that option in the advanced startup options first (which defeats the purpose of a safe mode but oh well).

I have a theory (actually a troubleshooting measure rather) the issue may be related to the the Nvidia Drivers. My suggestion is to run throught the install process of Windows 8 but before going and installing Windows 8, I suggest installing the latest Nvidia Drivers for Windows 8.1. The link below has the most current WHQL drivers directly from Nvidia.

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/66702

So the way you would do this is to reinstall Windows 8. Then install all Bootcamp drivers and updates. When the installation process is done, go ahead and install the driver package from Nvidia. You may choose to cleanly install the driver, and your computer will reboot during the driver installation process. When the update is done, go ahead and download Windows 8.1 from the Store.

See if that works for you. Best of luck!

I had this same problem. After updating to Windows 8.1, the screen light went out. The screen was still on and in the right ambient light, I could (just barely) see things being displayed. I'm on an HP pavilion dm4, so I'm not sure if this fix will help, but I was dual booting Windows 8 and Windows 7 due to some compatibility issues. I noticed that the screen blacked out on the page asking which OS I wanted to boot up. So I tried deleting my Windows 7 partition and now 8.1 is working fine. Seems like it just doesn't like the dual boot.

I've spent some time fighting with black screen problem on Windows 8.1. So far the following worked for me the best:

1. Use only latest Apple Bootcamp drivers. Do not install Nvidia drivers or autoupdate drivers.

2. Turn off Windows Auto Update completely. Especially the part that auto-updates drivers.

I believe windows 8.1 autoupdate pushes something incompatible.

That worked for me with Mac Book Retina and clean Windows 8.1 installation (first install windows 8.1, turn off autoupdate as part of the setup, the install latest apple bootcamp drivers, and after that don't touch anything).

I was trying to update to Windows 8.1 too from Windows 8. The install failed and it subsequently reloaded Windows 8. I would just like to point out that updating to 8.1 through 8 appears to cause issues with fusion drive (I can't speak for other drives), it will reformat the Mac OS X partition to Logical Drive and it will subsequently begin to degrade (start producing fragment partitions that cannot be mounted or deleted)

I am just saying this because after a lengthy phonecall to Apple the result is I have to reset my iMac back to factory settings 😟 A clean install of Windows 8.1 should hopefully rectify this problem.

Also, as a general precaution and a way to speed up recovery from bad drivers, I strongly recommend:

1) enabling "System Restore" on Windows 8.1. This allows easy rollback from a bootable DVD/USB.

2) turning off "Fast Startup" feature in Windows System Setting. This ensures OS does full reboot and does not accumulate random errors in the kernel.

Hope it help.

Very similar issues as described here - iMac crashes every time when it wakes from sleep with an "Thread Exception Not Handled".

Worked OK with Windows 8.0, problem only started following upgrade (not clean install) to Windows 8.1.

I've updated NVIDIA GTX 675MX drivers from the vendor (not MS), but still same issue - disabled sleep for now...

Interestingly, I did have crashes a several times immediately following the upgarade from 8.0 to 8.1 as described by drgfrt, but this resolved itself following a couple of reboots.

Has anyone installed Windows 8.1 from scratch and still had problem - just wondered if a clean Win 8.1 install will help?

3.2GHz i5 / GTX 675MX

I have the same problem on an iMac 27inch. I have upgraded to Windows 8.1 from 8.0 and my screen goes black when booting but I can access the machine with VNC and RDP. I do see an initial blue Windows logo.

I have disabled the AMD Radeon HD 6700 and this fix the problem but my maximum resolution is now 1920x1440. The screen goes black as soon as I enable the Radeon driver again.

I have deleted the AMD Radeon HD 6700 Driver and downloaded and installed the Beta Catalyst Software Suite Version 13.11. So far so good The Driver is now AMD Radeon HD 6700M version 9.12.8.0.

I have the same problem on Macbook Pro mid 2010. I have a clean installed Windows 8.1. After installing the Nvidia drivers on GeForce 320M the screen becomes is black.

I was advised to install the latest WHQL driver from Nvidia for my Nvidia card before upgrading from W8 to W8.1

However, this was not as easy as it seemed as the installation of the new driver resulted in a black scfreen in W8.

I eventually installed it in safe mode (and if I'm not mistaken I disabled the Intel gpu in device manager) and the system booted to the desktop.

However Windows first update installed a new Intel driver and this borke my desktop again so I needed to remove the Intel driver from Windows/System32/Drivers and the update came back again - so I hid that update and things have been fine since.

This was on a rMBP 10,1 (mid 2012)

I'm having the same issue with a Mid-2010 iMac (AMD 5750 HD series GPU).. If I manually install a HD5750 driver everything appears fine, however Windows 8.1 then decides I need a 5800 series driver and my fun begins!

Once the display goes to sleep it will never wake up again, If I RDP to my desktop and roll-back the driver it comes back to life.

I got fed up with this issue not being looked at by Apple and got rid of boot camp.

I migrated to a VirtualBox Windows 8.1 Virtual Machine running from my OSX Maverick and I am pretty impressed of being able to use both Windows 8.1 and OSX at the same time. VirtualBox is free. I had call Microsoft automated line to re-licence Windows. I did download a Windows 8.1 ISO from Microsoft to install in the VM.

I have an iMac 27" with Windows 8 and Bootcamp 5.0. I have waited the official support of windows 8.1 from Bootcamp to try the migration to windows 8.1. It happened with Bootcamp 5.1 in February.

So I upgraded Bootcamp to release 5.1 thanks to an USB key and then selected from windows store the free upgrade of windows 8 to 8.1. No issue, it worked well.

Hope it help