The symptoms are pretty much the same: black screen with a mouse cursor.

The second potential reason for the Windows black screen is third-party application issues. Cool, right? By the way, you can use these steps on your Windows PC as well-not only in a virtual machine. We’ve just reviewed a few simple steps that can fix one cause of the black screen in Windows. Now we can choose Task Manager and check the Explorer in the Process tab.ĭon’t see it there? Restart it by clicking File → New Task:Īfter performing these steps, the Start panel and all of your icons should appear and you will be able to continue working in Windows. Let’s check the explorer process in Task Manager by clicking Devices → Keyboard → Alt+Ctrl+Delete: Basically, you’re working in a program on the Windows side, make a few clicks left and right and…all you see now is the empty black desktop with your mouse cursor: The first and simple scenario in which the black screen can pop up is the incorrect work of the “explorer” process. I will be using Parallels Desktop for Mac with Windows 7 and XP virtual machines for the tests. So, let’s see if there are some common cases when Windows goes to the black screen and if there’s any way to fix it. Needless to say, it took a while for me to do that, but now we’ve got some shiny screenshots and thorough instructions! How about that? In order to test a few fixes for the Windows black screen issue, I performed real tests with live configurations. Don’t rush to trash your poor virtual machine just yet-instead, we can try to fix it. Sound familiar? What can I say? That’s sad! But it’s not over. For instance: one of the worst-case scenarios is when Windows gives you the black screen. I could install special utilities, or just additional programs…īut this customization could result in some issues with the operating system. Sometimes I just add more RAM and CPU for the performance needs, or change the internal settings of the system. Once new software is installed on a Mac, some folks just start using it with the default settings, but others (and I’d say I’m one of them) optimize it by changing various settings. Some people are tech-savvy, and some aren’t. Guest blog by Maria Golubeva, Parallels Support Team

Windows 10 black window pop up