Windows 8 App just displaying blank screen

[queeg505]

I have downloaded and installed the Windows 8 metro app to have a look at but when I run it it shows the splash screen "PC Monitor" and just displays a blank screen. I can call the Charms menu up and even if I do "About" it doesn't display anything at all. Other links in the Charms menu ie "Terms Of service" call up IE and "Request a Feature" jumps to email. Any ideas? Regards Mark

[Marius]

You have not even seen the login screen for the app?

[queeg505]

Nope no login, I run the PC Monitor dashboard Ok from this PC

[Marius]

We never had this issue before - try to remove it and install it again.

[queeg505]

Same result I get the splash screen and then just a dark blue screen, I get the Charms menus and I can drag down and close the app, that's it!

[queeg505]

Further to this I have updated the app per the notification in the Windows Store, it still displays a blank dark blue page but when I moved my mouse around the screen it changed to the cursor icon in two areas, I assumed these were the credentials boxes so I blindly entered in my details and pressed Enter. The screen still shows a dark blue blank page but I got a notification via email that I had added a new device to my account so I assume then that the issue is something graphical? I don't have any other display issues in anything else I use but I am using multiple monitors. Any further ideas?

[Marius]

We cannot reproduce this whatsoever. I suggest uninstalling the app and then install it again from Windows Store.

[queeg505]

I have done that twice, its very odd, I'm getting notification pop ups from the app just cant display it. I can only assume it s a display driver issue perhaps, I will look to see if there is an Nvidia driver update and report back.

[queeg505]

I'm already using the latest driver ver 306.97 for my GeForce GTX 670. Here's what I get in the sidebar:

 

 

As you can see its just blank, if I run up the app itself I get this:

 

[Matt]

I had the same issue -- blank app except for charms, but notifications worked perfectly. Unfortunately, I can not remember how I fixed it. For some reason, I am thinking it was a routing issue. Not sure, though. If it comes back to me, I will edit this post.

[RVennikAdmin]

Have exactly the same problem Just a blank screen, and in the sidebar no preview.. Can't logon because it displays nothing.. Thing is, it's only on my work-Win8 notebook.. My home win8 notebook has no issues with this.. Though that's a Intel GMA950 device, where at work I'm with a Radeon HD2600.. 

 

So the weird thing: It worked in the past. Somehow this bevaviour has popped up. Still get messages, but can't actually open the app. When I uninstall the app, and reinstall, the settings are retained! Still getting messages and everything, but same behaviour.. 

 

When I uninstall the app, it's also removed from %ProgramFiles%\WindowsApps so no cached info there.. There are remnants in the registry, but they address merely notification history, icons etc.. Just to be safe I removed them too.. %appdata%\local\Packages also did nolonger contain information about PC Monitor.. Cleared all temp folders, restarted, ran CCleaner. Also found two extra entries of "MMSOFTDesign" in my %appdata%\local\Microsoft\Windows\Live\Roaming\LocalCache folder. I figured these are the settings from Metro apps which are synced to the cloud to sync the app settings across different Win8 machines. Deleted them too for good measure. 

 

Still no luck. Darn. 

 

Colleague of mine said that roaming cache of your live account is only deleted after 30 days of 'inactivity', which means that if the app is deleted from all your Win8 devices, only after 30 days the roaming cached data is deleted.. 

Perhaps I'm missing something, but can anyone shed any light on this? Of perhaps Matt can suddenly remember what the solution was and help us all

[Marius]

Looks like PC Monitor is not the only app suffering from this issue:

 

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/several-windows-8-apps-load-to-a-black-screen/5b582dfd-e83b-4ac8-8ede-00559350bf6f

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/1274-73-windows-black-screen-restart

[Daniel Gentry]

I am in the same boat...  the app used to work on my Win8 pc beautifully, now I get a blue screen, and it maxes out one of my processors.  It is like there is some loop it gets stuck in.

 

I have uninstall/reinstalled, etc...

 

I am willing to help in any way to get this resolved. I am a developer myself, if you need someone to run a debug version, etc. please let me know.

 

Dan Gentry

dan at greater visions dot com

[Marius]

Is PC Monitor the only Win 8 app that has this issue? 

Do you see the splash screen when the app starts?

[Daniel Gentry]

it was not the only app that experienced the issue. 

 

I had updated my video drivers, but had not rebooted (so I apologize now for not doing that BEFORE I posted..). So I rebooted.. when I rebooted Windows said "reboot and update" so apparently there was an outstanding Windows update.

 

anywho, it is now working again..  thank goodness!

 

for reference, I did see the splash screen, and the live tile was updating.

[queeg505]

Further to this I had Windows 8 running in Bootcamp on my Mac Book pro so installed the app on here and it worked fine.

 

Today I have installed the newest NVidia drivers on my PC so have gone from 306.97 to 310.70 and now the application is working fine.

 

I guess its fairly safe to assume that the problem is related to graphics drivers and that hopefully the issue is resolved as drivers are updated. 

[Marius]

Thanks for the update.

[hilary31]

Sounds like you might need to do a fresh install. I just had to do one last night on my laptop because of a DNS issue in Win8. Refresh and Reset didn't seem to solve it, so I had no choice. That's why his is a beta though.

Could try using the Repair options available on the Windows 8 disk (click Repair your Computer, instead of Install) before resorting to wiping it out completely though.

Good luck!