Thanks for the workaround and your time helping.
The black screen is obviously frustrating so do you think it’s worth me flashing a clean dietpi img to a spare micro sd card and starting from scratch? If you can’t replicate the 5 min black screen I obviously have an incorrect setting somewhere and it could be difficult to locate.
With regards to the other machines I manage, they run Lubuntu with Xrdp installed and when I connect to them from MS RD client it simply logs me in with the stored credentials and displays the desktop. How come I can’t replicate this with dietpi?
Thanks.