Black Screen and Blinking Cursor When Installing Windows 7: a BIOS Update Fixed It
I was building a test computer from old hardware, and for the test I needed Windows 7 64-bit.
I turn on the computer and choose to boot from the USB stick in the boot menu. A couple of seconds pass, the screen flickers, and I’m left with a black screen and a white dash blinking in the top left corner. And that’s it.
The Windows 7 setup got stuck on a black screen
I thought I’d wait: maybe it was loading and needed time, though I didn’t remember such delays before. I waited a couple of minutes – nothing: the USB stick’s light wasn’t blinking, and nothing changed.
What I tried
- I had the USB stick in a front-panel port, so I tried a port at the back, right on the motherboard. Same thing.
- Maybe the USB stick was damaged? I took another one – same result. Sometimes it was just a black screen and the computer froze.
- I started googling and found tons of advice. I tried another hard drive, other SATA ports on the board and another SATA cable.
- I tried without a hard drive at all – black screen again. So the problem clearly wasn’t the drive or the cable.
- I reset the BIOS to its default settings – that didn’t help either.
A BIOS update fixed it
The last option was to flash a new BIOS. I downloaded the latest BIOS for the Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard.
BIOS versions for the Asus M2NPV-VM: the latest is 5005 beta
It turned out the board had BIOS version 0405 from August 25, 2006, and it had never been updated since. As they say, if it works, don’t touch it – but it was time to touch it :-)
I updated it with the built-in ASUS EZ Flash 2 utility: I copied the 5005.BIN file to the USB stick and selected it in the utility.
ASUS EZ Flash 2: old BIOS 0405 and the new 5005.BIN file
I updated the BIOS to 5005 beta. It might have been wiser to use the previous version, 1401 from 2008, rather than a beta, but I was tired of fussing over something as simple as installing Windows 7 and wanted results. While the BIOS is being flashed, never turn the computer off.
And it worked: after the BIOS update, the Windows 7 setup started without any problems.
In short: if you get a black screen when installing Windows
- Try another USB port, preferably at the back, on the motherboard.
- Try another USB stick.
- Disconnect extra drives and reset the BIOS to default settings.
- Check how up to date your BIOS is and update it from the motherboard maker’s website ;-)