Black screen of death

[Jaco45er]

Help, I need a desktop guru's advice.

I have only had this new Packard Bell machine loaded with Windows 7 home premium since Thursday and already I have the infamous black screen with the cursor.

I have managed to get the thing back up and running again but I dare not turn it off.

It has updated with one of the "suspect" updates, but I see no point in undoing the update because surely with updates on it will just update again?

I have found this:

According to a Microsoft email that's making the rounds, the company is "investigating reports that its latest release of security updates is resulting in system issues for some customers." Until that time, what's a poor PC user to do? Prevx, a UK developer of anti-malware software, has surmised that a recent Windows security patch changed Access Control List (ACL) entries in the registry, preventing some software from running properly and prompting Engadget to whip up a Bergman-inspired graphic

Now apparantly Prevx has put together a fix, has anyone tried it? did it work? or has someone out there resolved this issue?

Many thanks,

Jaco

[synaesthesia]

PrevX is full of crap and really isn't to be trusted. Later on in the day that was reported they went back and said sorry, it's not a problem with an update, and confirmed MS's report that it was in fact malware related.

So, time to get the scanners out

[Michael]

Yes I can confirm it is definitely malware related, but as yet I haven't seen it happen with my own eyes; only read reports about it. I don't know whether Microsoft have identified specifically what malware is creating the black BSOD.

I can recommend you give Malwarebytes a go, if you can get Windows to start in Safe Mode. I wonder though if Windows 7 has that stupid feature like Windows Vista where you can't install applications in Safe Mode without changing entries in the registry!

[Jaco45er]

Hey thanks chaps

Glad I posted now, was just about to give Prevx a go.

I will have a look at that tomorrow Michael. I can actually get it to boot up, but it takes like 4 or 5 attempts

Thanks again

Jaco

[synaesthesia]

PrevX are supposedly an up and coming "trustable" security firm however all I've seen from them so far is false reports, speaking out before thinking and scaremongery.

Aye, I'll second Malwarebytes, it's really rather effective at shifting and detecting nasties.

[sidewinder]

I'm having it, but I dont have to reboot, I do get to the desktop after waiting for about 10 minutues but it is incredibly annoying. I cant see how it could possibly be malware, I only installed Win 7 yesterday!!

[Bezwick]

Its a Packard Bell, they are the malware of the PC industry. trust me i used to work at Mastercare, who were PC worlds support company. They sold more PB's then any other brand, not because they were the best machines but because the sales guys get the highest commission on them. You will probably find as i did so many times in the past the PC has non standard hardware and non standard drivers and they are causing the Black screen of death.

I cant see how it could possibly be malware, I only installed Win 7 yesterday!!

[sidewinder]

Its a Packard Bell, they are the malware of the PC industry. trust me i used to work at Mastercare, who were PC worlds support company. They sold more PB's then any other brand, not because they were the best machines but because the sales guys get the highest commission on them. You will probably find as i did so many times in the past the PC has non standard hardware and non standard drivers and they are causing the Black screen of death.

Mine isnt a PB though, that was the original poster. Mine is a Dell Optiplex 745 with totally standard components!

[sidewinder]

And have just realised mine only does it when logging on as a domain user, local users are fine.
As is my colleagues machine, which is identical to mine and has all the same updates etc - he just doesnt have the problem

[Jaco45er]

Its a Packard Bell, they are the malware of the PC industry. trust me i used to work at Mastercare, who were PC worlds support company. They sold more PB's then any other brand, not because they were the best machines but because the sales guys get the highest commission on them. You will probably find as i did so many times in the past the PC has non standard hardware and non standard drivers and they are causing the Black screen of death.

Hi Bezwick

You have me very nervous now. You saying it will never be a stable machine?

[sidewinder]

Well I've found the solution to mine - doesnt look like it was anything to do with the actual black screen of death problem.

Mine was to do with group policy, we had tried to set some drive maps using the new group policy way, since our vbs script doesnt seem to run on 7. Not sure if it was because of doing it that way (without having server 2008) or just because of a permissions problem, but it was causing the hang. Removed them and it logs on in seconds.

The actual event log entry was:

The winlogon notification subscriber <GPClient> took 599 second(s) to handle the notification event (StartShell).

600 seconds of cause being 10 minutes, which was the exact time it was hanging for.

[ahuxham]

PrevX are supposedly an up and coming "trustable" security firm however all I've seen from them so far is false reports, speaking out before thinking and scaremongery.

Aye, I'll second Malwarebytes, it's really rather effective at shifting and detecting nasties.

PrevX are at least 7 years old, they've had various applications on the market, and I've used them for various reasons of the users, never had a reason to distrust them.

They had a system manager that would control every hook, call and application made and ask for authority to continue, this was invaluable when determining what a program actually did and what it referenced, many people still use it to this day.

[amyr]

I've had this problem when logging on as a domain user on my Win 7 test box....I think mine is caused by mapping printers using a vbs script (yet the network drive mapping works fine) - I only found this solution today (so renamed pc to something that isn't in our script) and its working fine. So now I need to investigate mapping network printers dependent on machine name...

hope this helps,
Amy

[amyr]

I had a breakthrough this morning, when I discovered this article relating to vista but seems to apply to 7 as well.

I solved my printer mapping problem by going in to the local group policy editor and under computer configuration -> administrative templates, clicking on Printers.

Then double click on Point and Print restrictions and selecting enabled.

THen under when installing drivers for a new connection, select Do not show warning or elevation prompt.

Then under when updating drivers for an existing connection, select do not show warning or elevation prompt.

Click ok.

This has solved my black screen of death for all users when logging in to windows 7 (the only way I could get in previously was to press shift key 5 times to bring up the sticky keys dialog).

Hope this helps.
Amy

[helloxiaokitty]

yeah, maybe the malware modified your registry, so your computer ````
maybe you can use Wondershare registry optimizer to slove your problem