RSSTracking Vista's elusive 'Black Screen of Death'
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 17, 2009, 11:58 AM
What we've been calling a "perception problem" with Windows Vista -- the notion that users may tend to think it's less secure or reliable than it has proven to be on a large scale -- isn't just about perception for users faced with severe unreliability issues. As a Windows user for over two decades, I have been to the far depths of unreliability, and have lived to tell the tale. Probing the problems with Windows is actually part of my job, and one reason I actually am a Windows user -- unlike the rest of the world.
Yesterday, a problem that's far beyond perception afflicted a 64-bit Vista SP2-based Betanews production system for the fourth time in a year, this time with the remedy being so far out and unusual that everyday users could not possibly have discovered it by normal means. As we've found out, it's a problem that has affected a small number of Vista users since the system's debut three years ago, though that number appears to be growing steadily just as Vista is preparing to vacate the spotlight for Windows 7.
It's being jocularly called the "Black Screen of Death" (KSoD), although unlike its bluer predecessor, it's not about a Windows driver freezing up or an exception or stack overflow locking up the kernel. In fact, the most puzzling aspect of this dilemma has been that Vista is actually running and the logs show all the drivers have loaded and are in working order. You just can't use it -- the screen stays black, except for a bright mouse pointer that you can move around for no reason except to prove your machine hasn't locked up. The usual system keystrokes -- Ctrl-Alt-Del, Ctrl-Esc, Alt-Tab, Ctrl-Shift-Esc -- all appear non-functional.
The first three times we encountered this dilemma, we were able to restore our Vista system through System Restore rollback, which did bring back our system and which then enabled us to uninstall and reinstall updates. We then dismissed the incidents as more peculiar and perhaps non-unusual behavior from Windows. The fourth time was more serious, although we did recover and, just in case you experience this yourself, we'll tell you how. Our research during the incident indicated that gradually more Vista users have faced the KSoD in recent months, though the experiences they have shared are so diverse that a precise pathology of the problem has yet to emerge...and Microsoft hasn't been much help in that department.
This amateur YouTube video shows the actual Black Screen of Death behavior on an Alienware notebook computer.
Here is what my experience with Windows is telling me: The KSoD appears to me to be a behavior that's, to borrow a Microsoft phrase, "by design." In other words, the behavior that allows you to see the Vista log in screen, see your users' faces all in a row, and log in under any user name and password just as you would normally...before encountering the inky void, feels like a program that's behaving the way it was designed to. Presently, my belief is that this behavior may be triggered by any number of different events, and that the nature of the events themselves is not directly connected to the behavior. That would explain the different situations users faced leading up to the problem, as well as the fact that what appears to be the solution for some has not been a solution for all.
Back in 2007, Microsoft representatives sent e-mails to their customers warning of the onset of something called "Reduced Functionality Mode," which reportedly enabled Vista to disengage the Start Menu, taskbar, and other features when Microsoft software was determined not to be genuine. That was when the whole "Black Screen" metaphor was first coined. For reasons that we thought at the time had to do with Microsoft listening to its customers, it replaced RFM in Service Pack 1 with a less detrimental piece of built-in nagware. (Our affected Vista machine uses SP2.)
My experience is telling me that the Black Screen is a kind of "curtain" which may have been intended as an intentionally aggravating shutdown for suspected software pirates. Think of it as deprecated code that may be hanging around the operating system, like unused DNA for a more evolved species. I have no independent confirmation of this theory; however, it's the only rational explanation I can apply to the fact that Windows truly is running and operational during the whole time, as I was able to confirm. Now, did I deserve this curtain? In other words, am I running non-genuine Microsoft software? No. All of our Microsoft software on production systems here is legitimate -- either purchased individually or distributed to us by Microsoft itself through our MSDN subscription.
The first three times I encountered the KSoD, for the first several tries, I could not boot Vista even to Safe Mode with Command Prompt -- in that instance, the system would appear to freeze at the "Please wait" screen. Running the WinPE recovery environment (available either from the Vista install disk or from the extended boot menu, available when you press F8 on startup) enabled me to roll back the system to a pre-update state, and that appeared to resolve the issue. For the record, two of those incidents began with Vista failing to recover from hibernations, the third seemed to be random and triggered by nothing obvious.
This fourth incident was, to use my grandmother's phrase for recipes that never cooked to her standards of perfection, "a doozy." Not even the earliest system restore point resolved the matter, and I often had to run WinPE from the Vista install disc instead of the F8 method (although that method did eventually work twice). The incident began with an attempt to load a simple Excel spreadsheet. Excel locked up, then I tried using Task Manager to remove Excel. Nothing happened, so I tried a reboot from Task Manager. And that didn't happen either, so I tried to close all my programs first. They locked up and turned that ghostly shade of white that Vista gives them when that happens. So in desperation, I powered down.
Cue the Rod Serling narration.
Next: How I escaped from Vista's darkest tunnel...
Ive just encounter this today.. urg! good thing i found this article.. however.. for me there is no link on that dialog box... im at a lost :(
Score: 0
|Whew, thanks for the article. I thought my 6-month old Dell Inspiron 1525 (Home Premium) was going bad. KSoD first happened after the last MS Update. I believe I allowed it to go into Hibernate while/after the download. Tried F8 on restart and everything else with no luck. Then I somehow got it into Safe Mode and restarted it from there. It's happened a couple times since, mainly on restart from Hibernate after I've walked away.
I do notice now that the desktop "blinks" black twice every time it starts; never saw it do that before. I'll be watching this site for updates.
Score: -1
|i have dual display with an extended desktop and was getting two black screens.
however, i haven't been getting them since i modified the virtual memory.
i took it off automatic and set it to the system drive with the custom amounts according to microsoft:
a) initial size at 300 megs+ (ram amount) &
b) max at 3 x (ram amount)
might be worth a try.
incidentally,
i couldn't max out the size in "b" above.
so basically, i maxed it out at 2.99 times my total ram.
Score: 0
|Scott, I am experiencing this problem as well and using your fix. However, I can't get the MSconfig to open up after navigating to it though the sticky keys link. I just get the mouse cursor with the circular icon. After awhile it just goes to the black screen again. I think the system is trying to open the "permissions" pop-up since this is an admin task, but can't get it open. I don't know what else to do. Any thoughts?
Score: 0
|I have had the black screen 2 time now, I run Laptop HP vista Premium update to service pack 2.
the first time the black screen appear was under service pack 1 and it gave me in the bottom righthand corner a message (Windows Vista (TM) Evaluation copy. Build 6002) while before that there was no message at all. so it must have to do with Piracy of some sort.
Score: 0
|I had this with Vista Home Premium 32bit on a laptop. After typing login pword, black screen. No Task Manager possible. System Restore failed. Even could not reimage the HDD until I discovered it was bad blocks (a hardware problem not software). Chkdsk /r to mark bad blocks, then reload image from my backup. :)
Score: 0
|Here is another take on the matter using Vista Business SP1 http://www.electrictoolb...lack-screen-after-login/
Score: 0
|@Skiman
@Guru
Two ideas that are amazing because they are simple, and yet they do work from time to time. When something really bad happens, people's minds race, and these tricks can easily be overlooked. I've been surprised every once in awhile when an additional account saved the day, as the Guru advises. Therefore, as he suggests, I always run an "emergency" user account with admin priv, and I call it whatever is the main user's name plus "X", such as "Joe X".
Similarly, Skiman's advice about the two monitors: that is in the BIOS somewhere—at least, I seem to recall tweaking it there—but also I read a warning about exactly that when I was setting up my last self-made computer. I don't remember exactly where I saw the warning—too bad—but somewhere along the line, Skiman's point was mentioned as a "be sure you do this right".
Score: 0
|I had a similar experience with Windows 7RC. It took me 3 reinstalls before I finally realized what it was doing. My nVidia video card has two outputs - a DVI and a VGA. At one point in my past I had hooked up BOTH to my monitor, just to see which looked better. I think I ended up using the DVI mode, but I never unplugged the other cord!
Sure enough, Windows 7 saw both video outputs and decided to use the VGA one as my main screen and the DVI as the secondary. It obviously had no idea that both were connected to the same monitor. So the cursor would still work fine, but the start menu, taskbar, and any window I attempted to open, like task manager, opened on the primary screen and I never saw it. I used my monitor to switch modes and there it all was - start menu/etc...
Oddly Vista never did this to me but Win7 must've detected it differently.
Score: 0
|Has this behavior (KSoD) been noted in the 64-bit flavor?
Score: 0
|For heaven's sake, I should have noted this...This was the 64-bit flavor of Vista. I'll add that to the text.
-SF3
Score: 0
|well then, mr fulton.
if you are getting the black screen of death, then are you using a pirated os?
it would not be beyond microsoft to implement covert programming to counter anti piracy.
we all remember the wga tool that was snuck down onto peoples computers under the guise of a critical update.
it was a critical update on behalf of microsoft.
and of course, since the inception of win95, there has always been suspicioun that microsoft was able to sabotage the competition (netscape, wordperfect, lotus) via windows programming.
in anycase, i think the black screen of death is/are the result of the XDDM and WDDM video drivers.
have you tried using non microsoft certified display adapter drivers?
Score: -2
|Here's an idea, DatabaseBen:
RTFA.
Score: -2
|So the solution is "disable all the services and then add them back until you encounter the problem"? so that's what? 14 words vs. all the verbosity above? and you're wondering why or how he didn't figure out the point?
almost no one peruses the internet ...
Score: 0
|@Ben, no; up above, you read: ". . . .am I running non-genuine Microsoft software? No. All of our Microsoft software on production systems here is legitimate. . . ."
Score: 0
|@tenoq,
here's one for you
gfy
Score: -3
|@syliva
i notice when i get a black screen i don't get a mouse pointer. perhaps, because i have an extended desktop across two monitors & two display adapters.
however there is much disk activity like processes are running. so i simply have to reboot.
i have been looking into the page file feature/settings as a possible contributor.
Score: -3
|I have never seen this problem with Vista, as I don't use it that much. I do set up what I call 'heavily-configured' machines, much as Sylvia describes, and have had it happen twice with XP. SP2.
The first time it was remedied by backing up the needed things and wiping the drive. The second time, I was able to boot with another account and found the problem was totally limited to my account. By backing up, and removing that account (mine) then adding myself back as a user, the problem was repaired.
Now I never configure a machine without at least two accounts that show up on the login page (I could not get in using the admin account, so the reason for the second account showing becomes clearer)
Score: 0
|alienware.
Enough said. Horrible, horrible machines.
Score: 0
|I've done a fresh install and right after i got done installing it and was booting into the desktop i had a black screen. If you do ctrl alt del, you can see the mouse pointer change which shows the computer is not locked up. I was able to get my desktop back by removing my monitor from the video card are reattaching it. It gave me my desktop back and I was able to see everything. Sad thing it doesn't fix the problem, the black screen still comes back. I am now using Windows 7, where this black screen doesn't seem to happen. I do still have flashing black screens periodically that is fixed by turning my monitor off then back on, though this was in Vista and 7 both.
Score: 0
|I use Vista since January 2007 and I've never had this issue!
Score: 0
|Nor I, but I've probably had 30+ equally as annoying issues.
Score: 0
|I USE A CAR SINCE 1997 AND I NEVER HAVE ACCIDENT!!1
Score: 0
|I had to chkdsk from a Windows XP setup disc as WinPE (used by both the Recovery Environment and Vista/7 setup) had the same problem. Obviously bad sectors can deactivate your copy of Windows and lock you out.
Score: 0
|Your article is well-written, because I found myself genuinely scared as I read it. No, the glitch has never shown itself to me. What scared me was in knowing that I was simply being told the solution to a horrific problem that would not appear to have a solution if it really happened to most of us.
I don't use System Restore because it doesn't seem to be there when I really need it. Instead I use the freeware ERUNT and NTREGOPT, which needs admin priv, so I run Vista with the safety off—i.e., with UAC off, which defeats a lot of Vista security which I don't need anyway.
(Another excellent workaround is that I use XP, not Vista, for myself. I only use Vista when routinely maintaining it for clients.)
NTREGOPT will restore Windows if you can use a floppy or a USB stick or anything at all to get to a drive prompt. But not if UAC is turned on. Also, NTREGOPT works beautifully on 32-bit systems, but the 2nd registry hive—software—quickly becomes too big for it on 64-bit systems. Even so, ERUNT can still be used to back up the registry more effectively (in my opinion) than Sys Restore does. ERUNT is a backer-upper; NTREGOPT is a zero-based registry rebuilder (not a cleaner) and it is nice—but not necessary—to have both working in tandem.
I can put a clean OS on very quickly. And I never put an OS on either the system partition or the program or data files' partitions. But, even so, my systems are beautiful to look at, fast and very clean. It takes a lot of hours to make them that way, so I hate to have a system crash and burn. Thanks for sharing your info on this pretty ghastly peril. I hope that reading your article is as close as I ever get to actually experiencing it.
Score: 0
|Like all of their efforts, in this area, this only affects legit users and not pirates so it was a complete waste of resources and money.
Score: 0
|Google "casual" piracy. Learn something.
...and then stop posting this drivel every time anything remotely related to WGA comes up. It makes you look like a complete idiot.
WGA was never intended to stop the "Pirate Bay" crowd. It does, however, do quite well at its intended purpose.
...so not so much a waste of resources and money as you seem to so enjoy pretending.
Score: -1
|it's also hit far too many innocent bystanders.
Score: 0
|By who's estimation? People like sjc's? Show me some hard numbers. I'd bet it's *well* below 1%.
Score: -1
|Heh..
Yeah, looks like they should patch that.
I could come up with several logical, practical and reasoned reasons why it might not be a priority for them at the moment, but of course, that would get me labeled as a MSFT apologist.
Wouldn't want that, now would we? ;) (Warning: Heavy sarcasm detected...please use appropriate filter.)
Score: 0
|Call me an idiot, but once you've got task manager open can't you just run whatever process you want directly from there instead of d***ing about with sticky keys? Easy enough to look up the process name you want online. Hell, quit and restart explorer.exe and see what happens.
Also, why does it actually boot (after a while) in your video?
Score: -1
|Is no-one reading this article today? He said he couldn't launch task manager, and shortcut keys like CTRL+ALT+DEL didn't work.
Score: 2
|And if you, you raging twonk, managed to watch the video you'd see he did actually manage to run Task Manager. Hot keys clearly did work, as sticky keys is exactly that.
Score: 0
|Interesting article in that I have, from time to time experience the same thing. What is interesting is I look at it differently. When I decide to format the HD, the 1st thing I do before updates is the following:
1) disable System Restore- I don't like it but that is just a quirk in me.
2) turn off Admin Privilege- I just feel this creates more headaches than it is worth especially since there are some programs installed in the Admin setting that don't automatically flow through to the other accounts (i.e. Spybot). Also, updating can be an issue on some programs.
3) the 3rd thing I do and sometimes forget and this is when I see the above problem is that I turn off "Sleep" and "Hibernation". For me, I do encounter this black screen when these two settings are on and if the computer does go into either mode which essentially is a black screen, it is hard to, sometimes, get out of that mode.
4) I have found in those case a hard reboot a opposed to soft restart takes care of the problem but that obviously presents its own issues.
Obviously, in another setting this approach would not be the best but I am still left with the feeling that the problem is in Admin privilege and the hibernation or sleep mode. But, like you, I can't say for certain.
Score: 0
|