Black Blank Screen Windows 10 Boot Up Problem (Solved)

This blog post is about how I solved an issue when my Windows 10 boot up screen was black/blank during boot up and I couldn’t see anything.

Note: This specific issue happened to my computer because I didn’t swap two graphics cards properly. If you’ve stumbled across my 8Bit Mammoth blog post because of a similar issue, I hope the details below can help you.

Introduction
The problem was my own creation, when I replaced a Radeon HD 5450 graphics card with another HD 5450, but it was a different version of the model. I had presumed (mistakenly) that the drivers and software would carry on as normal, with the different card, but I was wrong!

The solution was to boot into safe mode and remove the drivers and software.

Warning: This blog post is informing you what I did, and is as much a reference to help me in the future, as well as to help others. Please don’t hold me responsible for any issues, costs or anything that occurs from reading this blog post.

How I solved my issue:

Boot into Windows 10 safe mode.
I’m sure there are better ways of booting into safe mode, but I chose the hard reset method! I’m not sure you should do this, so perhaps you should look at accessing safe mode another way.

1. I rebooted the computer a few seconds after the bios screen had disappeared, but holding the power button down. I did this until I saw ‘Preparing Automatic Repair’.
2. At the ‘Automatic Repair’ screen I selected, ‘Advanced options’.
3. Then at ‘Choose an option’, I opted for ‘Troubleshoot’.
4. The next screen I chose ‘Advanced options’.
5. Under ‘Advanced options’ I clicked on ‘Startup settings’.
6. Next I selected ‘Restart’.
7. A list of options were shown, and I pressed 4, to ‘Enable Safe Mode’.

Uninstalling the graphics card driver in safe mode

1. I logged in as administrator and right-clicked on the windows icon and selected ‘Device Manager’.
2. Under ‘display adapters’ I right-clicked ‘Uninstall device’.
3. At the next window I selected ‘Delete the driver software for this device’, then clicked ‘Uninstall’.
4. I restarted the PC. *

* For approximately the first thirty seconds there was a blank screen, but then it finally showed ‘please wait’. However once logged in it showed a black screen for another one to two minutes.

Removing the AMD drivers and software
I noticed that the AMD Catalyst Install Manager was still listed, but the option to remove was greyed out.

I downloaded and ran the AMD Clean Uninstall Utility and rebooted the PC when prompted.

Conclusion
If only I had removed the drivers and software before changing the graphics card, I wouldn’t have had the hassle.