How To Fix Black Screen Of Death On Xbox One [Explained]

Since a recent update, the Xbox One black screen of death has been visiting a large number of people around the world. Takes us back to the dreaded red ring of death that plagued the Xbox 360 starting from its early days of sales. Thankfully, the issue before or after green screen video output is not as serious as the red ring of death. And it’s incredibly easy to fix as well.

What is Xbox One ‘black screen of death’?

This is an issue that seems to be plaguing members of the Xbox Insider program the most. After a new update was issued for these folks in 2022, there were several reports of instances where their consoles were getting bricked.

Microsoft was quick to acknowledge this black screen bug and release an update to solve it. If your console has been lying dormant all this while chances are, you haven’t yet installed the update.

As for what exactly causes this issue, a glitch in the loading of the dashboard might be to blame. On the other hand, some believe it’s just a case of Microsoft releasing an unfinished update for the Insider program or that it could occur due to an error in system check. Whatever the case, it can indeed be fixed.

How to fix a bricked Xbox One?

There are more than a few ways to get around the problem of a bricked Xbox One. Thankfully, most of them are simple:

A. Switch tabs

This method involves giving the command to switch tabs while the screen is black. This can be done by pushing the Xbox button. You then need to quickly navigate to another tab before returning to the dashboard.

B. Press RT + Y

Several instances of this method working have also been spotted on the Internet. Just simultaneously press RT and Y, and your console could return back to normal. It’s a simple and fast method; so it definitely wouldn’t hurt to try it out once.

C. Visit the Xbox Store

Visiting the Xbox Store is known to unbrick the console as well. Just go to the store icon and instantly press A. This tricks may allow you to return to your dashboard.

If your system fails to work as usual and the issue persists in spite of all this, you will be stuck with just one option and that is to factory reset your Xbox One console.

Disclaimers before you factory reset your Xbox One

Factory resetting your console means completely wiping it and bringing it to the state it was in when you first powered it on. This means everything from your saved games to your saved data will be deleted from your console. You will also lose any videos, screenshots, and other media that you have stored on it.

While much of the stuff can be retrieved from the cloud, losing the rest of it could turn out to be incredibly disappointing. This is why it’s important that you grab the necessary backups.

There is indeed an option that allows you to keep your apps and games untouched while resetting your console, but it could go unnoticed sometimes. Moving on, you can fix Xbox issues like this via a factory reset through its settings menu. But when the blank screen greets you, you’ll be stuck with a completely inaccessible interface, of course.

This means you will need to follow a slightly longer process that needs some additional items at your disposal. These include a USB flash drive with at least 4GB worth of space and a PC with an Internet connection. Let us now get going with how you can reset your device.

How To Fix Black Screen Of Death Xbox One

It is quite simple to fix black screen of death on Xbox. Since your settings menu is not accessible, you will need to hard reset your console using a USB drive. For that, you will need to make sure that your drive is formatted to NTFS.

1. Insert an external drive into your desktop PC or laptop.
2. Right-click on your external drive.
3. Click on Format.
4. Under the File system option, select NTFS.
5. Hit Start.

You now need to download the required files onto your drive to get it ready for the resetting process. To do that, you need to:

1. Download this file onto your PC.
2. Unzip the file and move the $SystemUpdate folder onto your external drive.
3. If you can’t find the $SystemUpdate folder, click the Show Hidden Icons option in the taskbar.
4. Safely remove your USB flash drive and you’re good to go.

It is now time to get to the real bit.

Disconnect HDMI cable and power

1. Completely unplug the power cord and the HDMI cable from your console.
2. Wait for 30 seconds and connect them back again.
3. Plug your flash drive into one of the console’s USB ports.
4. Press and hold the Pair button on the left side of the console system while simultaneously holding the Eject button near the disc drive.
5. While you’re still holding these two buttons, you will need to press the Xbox button on the console once.
6. Let go of the Xbox button but keep the other two buttons held down for about 10 to 15 seconds. You should hear two beeps in quick succession. Take your fingers off the buttons after the second beep.

Your console should now say ‘something went wrong’ or take you to the hard reset menu. Either way, you will get the Reset option that you can use to fix the console.

Xbox One black screen on startup

You are now completely informed about what to do when such a problem arises during the startup process. Perform all of the steps we’ve listed above to troubleshoot and fix the startup issue.

Black Screen when loading game

This could be due to an error that occurred while the game was loading. You can perform a fix by:

1. Turning off your system by holding the power button for a few seconds.
2. Unplugging the power cable and removing the HDMI cable from the HDMI port.
3. Leaving them unplugged for one whole minute.
4. Connecting everything back again and launching the game.

Why does my Xbox keep saying ‘took too long’ to start?

The ‘took too long to start’ error on the display is very similar to the black screen of death Xbox One problem. This is why you can use the same troubleshooting tips for both of them.

Wrapping up

If none of these methods offers a solution to your ‘black screen after update’ problem, it may be time to have some experts handle the hardware. Contact Microsoft and get your console repaired or replaced officially.