Black screen for 10 seconds before lock screen after clean install of Windows11

Question

Black screen for 10 seconds before lock screen after clean install of Windows11

Aren Ünal 0

Hi all,

Since a clean install of Windows 11, my PC shows a black screen for about 18 seconds after the AORUS logo before the lock screen appears. The startup sound plays during this black screen, so Windows seems to be loaded, but nothing is displayed. Then the lock screen appears normally and everything works fine after login.

Video: [https://streamable.com/mc8kbu]

Specs:

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X3D (PBO / Curve Optimizer undervolt)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 AORUS PRO, BIOS F19a(beta)
GPU: NVIDIA [3070], driver [621.14]
RAM: [32] DDR4 3200 (XMP on)
Windows 11 [version/26h2, os buyld 26300.9818]

How I installed Windows:

Official Media Creation Tool ISO, USB made with Rufus
After setup, a friend ran Win11Debloat (raphire/win11debloat) on it

What I already checked:

Fast Startup is disabled (no change)
Event Viewer > Diagnostics-Performance: boot time ~37s, marked as non-degraded. Only small delays (NVIDIA Container, Bitdefender, RuntimeBroker, ~1.3s total) and an intermittent cdrom driver delay (0.5-2s)
Re-Size BAR disabled, CSM [disabled]
Third-party software: Bitdefender, Riot Vanguard (needed for Valorant)

Any idea what to check next? And how fixed this problem. :"(

Thanks!

0 comments

2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

For this symptom on Windows 11, the supported next checks are the standard black-screen recovery steps and the known Windows 11 black-screen issue path.

Try a graphics refresh during the black screen:
- Press Windows + Ctrl + Shift + B.
- Expected result: a beep or brief screen flicker if the graphics driver resets successfully.
Check display output mode during the black screen:
- Press Windows + P, then press P again and Enter to cycle display modes.
- This helps if Windows is loading but output is going to the wrong display mode.
Use the security screen path:
- Press Ctrl + Alt + Del.
- If the security screen appears, open Task Manager.
- From Task Manager, restart Windows Explorer. If needed, use Run new task and start explorer.exe.
If the screen remains blank, do a force restart:
- Hold the power button for 20 seconds.
- Risk: forced shutdown can interrupt updates or file activity.
Check whether the device is affected by the Windows 11 black-screen issue after sign-in:
- Microsoft documented a resolved issue where some devices, especially Azure Virtual Desktop hosts using FSLogix, could show a black screen or fail to load the desktop automatically.
- The resolution is to install the latest Windows update. For affected builds before the fix, a temporary workaround is to manually launch explorer.exe from Task Manager.

Based on the available documentation, the most directly supported fix path is:

install the latest Windows update available for the device
if the black screen appears and Task Manager is accessible, manually run explorer.exe
use Windows + Ctrl + Shift + B and Windows + P to rule out graphics reset and display-mode issues

References:

Answer 2

DaveM121 947.5K Independent Advisor

1

You indicate you have Bitdefender installed, open Bitdefender and check in that apps settings to see if it is set to scan your system on startup, that may be causing the problem.

2

Otherwise, check to see if your PC is producing any small Watchdog dump files, I will check those to see if they provide any insight into a potential cause of the system crashes.

Open Windows File Explorer.

Navigate to C:\Windows\LiveKernelReports

If there are any Watchdog dump files in the sub-folders of that folder, copy the files onto your Desktop, then zip those up.

Upload the zip file to the Cloud (OneDrive... etc.), then choose to share those and get a share link.

Then post the link here to the zip file, so I can take a look for you.

Aren Ünal 0 Reputation points

2026-11-10T12:01:56.38+00:00
Thanks. Two updates:

Bitdefender: "Early boot scan" was enabled. I disabled it and restarted, but the black screen still happens, so I turned it back on.

Watchdog files: There were two folders (WATCHDOG and WATCHDOG4400) in C:\Windows\LiveKernelReports, but both are empty. They were created at 2:38 PM today, which is exactly when I pressed Win + Ctrl + Shift + B to restart the graphics driver, so I think they are from that and not from the startup issue. Reliability Monitor shows no hardware errors or Windows failures on other days, even though the black screen happens on every boot.

Is there another way to find out what causes the black screen during startup?
DaveM121 947.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-11-10T12:16:37.5+00:00

Thank you for that information.

In this case, I checked your video, this is definitely a Windows problem, not a BIOS setting problem, you indicate your friend ran a debloater after you installed Windows, there is no way to trace what that has removed from Windows, that may have caused corruption in the Windows installation, that is the most likely cause of the problem.

Open the Settings App.

Go to System - Recovery.

Click the Reinstall Now' button in the 'Fix problems with Windows Updates', then wait for that process to complete and test if that resolves the problem.