Warning about a recent Windows 11 update causing black screen | Razer Insider
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Warning about a recent Windows 11 update causing black screen

  • November 21, 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 253 views
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Hi all, this is now more of a warning so hopefully nobody else has to experience this frustration... I have a 2021 RZB 15. Came with win10 and without thinking about it upgraded to win11 on launch... win 11 has mostly been fine, few bugs here and there, but nothing like this. Two few days ago (19/10/2021) before switching off I saw there was a Windows update, so I clicked 'update and shutdown'. Yesterday morning I tried booting up and the laptop switched on fine, but the screen was totally off, not even a backlight. So it would seem the update may have something to do with this? The system loads correctly, I can tell as the keyboard lights up fine and is responsive. Windows Hello works and it actually logs me in using it. You can see the red light flash when it is using face recognition. Once logged in razer synapse loads as my keyboard and mouse layout colours are displayed. So all working other than the black screen... I have tried ctrl + shift + win key + B to try reset the display. That makes the beep sound but no change to the display. I have tried connecting to my TV using hdmi, TV recognises something is plugged in and trys to connect but eventually says no signal. Tried f4 to cycle the display and different hdmi ports. I have tried Razer support chat and been through their troubleshooting steps to do a hard restart. I have tried booting in safe mode using the hold power button for 10 seconds to turn off, then on, then at the manufacturer logo hold for 10 seconds to turn off again, repeat etc... I saw this method for fixing a blank screen after win11 updates, but mine doesn't even show the manufacturer logo on boot, it's totally off with no backlight. I've never even slightly dropped the laptop. It barely moves and I look after it well. Working absolutely fine one second, perform an update and boom rendered a £2.2k laptop totally unusable. I feel this must be something to do with the update, unfortunately I cannot remember what the update was called. So yeah would be interested if anyone else has had this recently. I could only find one thread from back in 2015 when another person described the exact same issue with a win10 update, but no solution.
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    NiflheimNine
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Hi, I have just overcome exactly the same issue with my 2021 RZ09-0409. Initially I thought that plugging it in to my external monitor would help, to no avail. Each time I booted up, I got past the facial recognition on black screen, and nothing further happened. I had to hold the power button for 10 seconds for a hard shut down, then restart the device normally. This hard shutdown fixed the black screen for each time I did the 'hold the power button', but it would revert to the black screen every time I tried a normal restart. I tried the Razer Updater {RazerUpdater_v1.1.1.2_CH570-BIOSv0109v3.exe} with no joy. What ended up fixing the issue fully was to fully reinstall Nvidea Geforce Experience {GeForce_Experience_v3.24.0.123.exe}. I had previously tried to update all the graphics drivers, but found them up to date. I hope this fixes your problem.
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Interesting. Did your black screen start after an update? Thanks for your reply though, mine is now fixed. I had tried doing hard resets, like you say. But even then it was still black. In the end it had to go back to Razer for repair, they didn't provide much detail of what they did. Only that they 'replaced the PCBA'. So clearly a hardware issue. Now terrified to ever perform a Win update again...
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    SandraSteffe
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I WISH this thread had been pinned in the forums so I would have seen it before clicking OK to the windows 11 update. I have a razer blade stealth (model: RZ09-02810N71-R3N1) that I bought in 2020. Today I accidentally accepted the Windows 11 upgrade while the laptop was turning on. It took about a second before the screen went black. The laptop has been taken very good care of, never dropped or had any other issues. I am strongly suspecting the windows update as the cause here. I’ll tell you that monitor is dead, dead. No backlight. Not even the red facial recognition light blinks. The keyboard lights up, however, and the computer turns on similar to yours. I have tried a reboot, hard reboot, F8, F12, Win+CTRL+Shift+B, and basically every possible command I can think of, but nothing happens on the screen. I have the same issue mentioned above when trying to connect an external monitor. It says that nothing is connected to the HDMI, and I tried all USBA and USBC ports on the laptop as well as clicking F4 to get a signal on the external monitor, but nothing happens. I have realized that there’s nothing more I can do, and will take it to repair tomorrow. I will definitely try to update the thread when they figure out what the issue was.
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Update after a lengthy Razer tech support chat is that it is most likely a hardware issue with the motherboard or the LCD. Even though I cannot for the life of me understand why a windows 11 update would cause that. Off to repairs then I guess, and a lifetime of fear whenever I have to click on windows updates!
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secretFuzzyWuzzyleet818
Interesting. Did your black screen start after an update? Thanks for your reply though, mine is now fixed. I had tried doing hard resets, like you say. But even then it was still black. In the end it had to go back to Razer for repair, they didn't provide much detail of what they did. Only that they 'replaced the PCBA'. So clearly a hardware issue. Now terrified to ever perform a Win update again...
I took my laptop to a local repair shop, and they discovered the exact same issue. They tested the PCB/motherboard as well as looking at other possible hardware malfunctions. It is the PCB that is no longer working, and I have to send it to Razer for a replacement. It makes no sense that a Windows update would cause this, but it doesn’t sound like a coincidence when the exact same thing has happened to others.
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SandraSteffe
I took my laptop to a local repair shop, and they discovered the exact same issue. They tested the PCB/motherboard as well as looking at other possible hardware malfunctions. It is the PCB that is no longer working, and I have to send it to Razer for a replacement. It makes no sense that a Windows update would cause this, but it doesn’t sound like a coincidence when the exact same thing has happened to others.
Sorry to hear you have had to go through this. In the end it took around 3 weeks for me to get mine fixed from first contacting Razer support (that's with me living only a few hours away from their repair center). I did consider going to a local repair shop, but they were going to charge me around £100 just to look at it. You're right in that it doesn't seem to be a coincidence. I also found someone that experienced basically the same thing back in 2015, again with a Razer/Win update. It does seem to be a very small number of people that experience it because there's very little info online surrounding this exact issue. Luckily for us we still have ours under warranty, otherwise this could have been a very expensive issue. I also reported it to Microsoft, but they didn't seem to care at all. Essentially the advice is, keep things backed-up and if you experience this issue the device will most likely need to be repaired by a professional or Razer repair center. If you don't have a back-up of everything (like me) the issue obviously doesn't allow you see what you're doing, but you can still access all the drives etc. I managed to recover my data by using keyboard shortcuts to enable Windows Narrator. Its a faff, but this was important to do because Razer will just wipe your data in the repair process. Hope this post helps others!
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