Blank Startup Screen in Windows 10

     I have a small HP laptop that was working fine until one morning when I turned it on and got nothing but a blank screen. 

     Searching for a solution to the problem revealed that this is, apparently, not an uncommon problem. You may get a black or blank screen or even a blank screen with a loading circle at any time, however its likely to occur after startup, after login or it could happen randomly! 

     The cause could be anything from Windows acting up to a faulty device driver to actual hardware defects, but a blank screen at startup is most commonly caused by corrupted or missing dynamic-link library (DLL) files. Errors related to it usually occur when a program mishandles the file during use. The most common problem happens within the Windows registry, where applications look up the location of DLLs they need and because these are critical files, when one becomes unavailable, there's no telling what could go wrong. 

     Most commonly, you will experience program lock-ups, slow PC performance, system freezes, blue screen errors, startup or shutdown problems, and installation errors. In the worst case, if the DLL is required by Windows, your entire system could become unstable. 

     I recommend trying the fixes recommended in THIS Youtube video. In my case I was able to get the laptop up and running quite easily by following the method described at 1:58 in THIS Youtube video by the same author.