Black screen but the mouse still moves
Windows starts and I only see a black screen with my mouse pointer. What now?
Written by The CommonFixes team · fact checked by CommonFixes review desk
Last updated
Short answer
Windows has loaded, but the part that draws your desktop, called Explorer, did not start. The quickest thing to try first: restart the desktop by hand — Press Control, Shift and Escape together to open Task Manager. Click Run new task, type explorer.exe, and press Enter. The desktop usually appears immediately. Most people are done in about 10 minutes.
Full walkthrough below: 4 steps for Windows, rated easy.
Sounds like this
- •Black desktop
- •Mouse arrow works
- •No icons and no taskbar
Why it happens
Windows has loaded, but the part that draws your desktop, called Explorer, did not start.
Work through these in order
0% done- 1
Restart the desktop by hand
Press Control, Shift and Escape together to open Task Manager. Click Run new task, type explorer.exe, and press Enter. The desktop usually appears immediately.
- 2
Sign out and back in
Press Control, Alt and Delete, choose Sign out, then sign in again. This rebuilds the desktop from scratch.
- 3
Disconnect a second monitor
Unplug any extra screen and press Windows and P, then choose PC screen only. Windows sometimes sends the whole desktop to a screen that is switched off.
- 4
Undo the last update if it started right after one
Open Settings, Windows Update, Update history, then Uninstall updates, and remove the most recent one.
If none of that worked
If the desktop only appears in Safe Mode, create a fresh user account under Settings, Accounts, Other users. Broken user profiles behave exactly like this.
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Who wrote this and how we checked it
The CommonFixes team
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We are a small group of people who spend our days repairing laptops and desktops for family, friends and small offices. Every guide here starts with a problem someone actually brought to us, and we only write down the steps that put the machine right.
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CommonFixes review desk
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Before a guide goes live, a second person walks through it on a real machine and checks each instruction against the maker's own support pages. Anything we cannot confirm is removed rather than guessed at.
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This guide was last updated on 10 August 2026. If a step no longer matches what you see on screen, tell us on the contact page and we will test it again.
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