Black screen problems with Windows 10 at login

[PyROm]

We were having a big slow down resulting in the service start errors, black screens etc. We use Impero as well. What we found was the GFI Languard process update32.exe was constantly thrashing the harddrive, GFI Languard being what powers Impero patch management. By removing the computer from the patch management profiles and telling impero to force uninstall patch management agent on the windows 10 pc`s we got them working normally again.

[mitchell1981]

We don't use patch management but are still getting the black screens. Is the patch management agent installed along with the standard agent even if you aren't using it? What is the process to remove just the patch management element? Thanks.

[alfatec]

We use Impero and do not use the Patch Management and still get the black screens so I do not think it is the Patch Management.

[thimon]

We don't use Impero or any remote monitoring software and we're getting the black screen

[mitchell1981]

Hmm. We are on 5420 which I assume is the latest version (although I never know how to find out what the latest version is). I'll log it with the Impero support desk. I don't think it was happening before the latest update.

[AliG]

We experience random black screen and start menu freezes. We experienced the black screen after logging in as administrator this morning but after looking in task manager explorer.exe was not running and after running it from task manager the machine came to life again although saying that the start menu was frozen solid.

[thimon]

That's what we've found, you can manually run explorer.exe but we shouldn't have to do that at all

[Mic_Impero]

Good morning all,

 

I thought I'd pop in with an update that we are investigating this. We can't replicate it in house and have over 700 schools using our 5.4.20 version, with only reports of this happening the ones here on Edugeek (of course we've got the ones who've been in touch directly logged in house too).

 

Interestingly we've had one of our staff machines here experience the same issue this morning and I've got our internal systems and infrastructure manager working on it now. I'll post back with his findings, Impero related or otherwise in case it helps out. What I can say for certain is that we've had most of our machines running Impero 5.4.20 since about a week before the release date and running windows 10 (around 60 machines) and only this morning have we experienced this on one of them, the rest have carried on absolutely fine.

 

Will post back.

 

Mic

[timbo343]

Thanks for updating us on the issue. I must say that the issue isnt all the time. Maybe some schools dont know about the issue and just think its a slight bug.

 

Good to know that one of your staff machines has had the problem, at least we arent making it up now hehe.

[Mic_Impero]

Hi guys,

 

Found the fix for at least this one at ours. It's related to onboard Intel graphics. We're not yet sure if an update has caused the problem, but the solution for us was to Press Win + P then down and Enter until the screen comes back; windows is outputting to a phantom monitor which doesn't exist (and never has) so cycling the monitors blindly brings it back.

This may or may not be related to the problems you guys are experiencing - reading the threads, I think that there may be two issues here, that one affecting some people and another which is causing explorer not to run, which we've not seen here.

 

I found this thread on it which explains it a bit better than I have. Solved Fix for windows 10 booting to a black screen - Windows 10 Forums

 

Thanks

Mic

[Ephelyon]

There appear to be two issues - one producing a black screen prior to logon, and another producing a black screen after logon. Not sure if they're related...

[Mic_Impero]

The one I've mentioned above is prior to logon.

[timbo343]

The one I've mentioned above is prior to logon.

 

The one we have is Post Logon. I've heard and read so many stories about the pre-logon one.

[Ephelyon]

Indeed - which makes it harder to find info on the post-logon issue... :/

[Mic_Impero]

Hey guys,

 

Another thought RE post logon which our in house systems manager has seen before here and elsewhere (not running Impero) is that it's a profile issue with the logged on user. He follows these steps to fix (sorry we can't link the original thread as we can't find it, he's typed these out for us):

 

 

1. Reboot the machine

2. Log in to the machine as a local administrator

3. Rename the affected user’s profile folder under C:\Users

4. Launch a command prompt as admin and type

 

wmic useraccount get name,sid

5. Note the affected user’s SID from the command prompt output

6. Launch regedit as an admin and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

7. Look through the keys (left hand side) and find the SID of the affected user

 

8. Delete the key named with the SID of the affected user

9. Reboot the machine

10. Log in with the affected user’s credential

11. The issue should now be resolved

12. Clean up the renamed profile under C:\Users if the login was successful.

 

 

Please could one of you test this out for us all next time it's reported and let us know if it's successful? If we happen upon it here I'll do the same but we've not seen it recently.

 

Mic

 

- - - Updated - - -

[Ephelyon]

It happens completely at random here - won't show up for hours/days and then a random user will get it. Log out and back in and it's (usually) fine, with nothing having changed on the profile front. Sometimes it happens time after time until a reboot.

[timbo343]

Hey guys,

 

Another thought RE post logon which our in house systems manager has seen before here and elsewhere (not running Impero) is that it's a profile issue with the logged on user. He follows these steps to fix (sorry we can't link the original thread as we can't find it, he's typed these out for us):

 

 

1. Reboot the machine

2. Log in to the machine as a local administrator

3. Rename the affected user’s profile folder under C:\Users

4. Launch a command prompt as admin and type

 

wmic useraccount get name,sid

5. Note the affected user’s SID from the command prompt output

6. Launch regedit as an admin and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

7. Look through the keys (left hand side) and find the SID of the affected user

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39263[/ATTACH]

8. Delete the key named with the SID of the affected user

9. Reboot the machine

10. Log in with the affected user’s credential

11. The issue should now be resolved

12. Clean up the renamed profile under C:\Users if the login was successful.

 

 

Please could one of you test this out for us all next time it's reported and let us know if it's successful? If we happen upon it here I'll do the same but we've not seen it recently.

 

Mic

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

It's random here too.

 

The profile fix that you've mentioned we saw all the time when we first deployed Windows10 in August and staff were logging in in September.

 

I've just checked a student machine and can confirm there's no other listed profiles other than the user who is logged on at the moment. Also, we use delprof to delete local profiles too so the local profiles are totally removed. We use mandatory profiles here.

@Ephelyon is right, it happens on random machines at random times. One machine could do it once and then nothing on that machine again.

[Mic_Impero]

Cheers Ephelyon, just trying to throw everything into the mix in case it turns out not to be an Impero issue and this is helpful. In the mean time we're continuing to investigate here and we're about to make another call to a customer with this issue to investigate further.

[Ephelyon]

Are you, by any chance, in a position to nudge Microsoft about it too? I'd have hoped a major UK education supplier might have more influence than an individual customer...

[Mic_Impero]

Absolutely, we can do that but ideally we need to replicate it first, and there lies the problem. We're a Microsoft Gold partner too so I'm sure we could do something with it, I'm just not sure what I'd tell them at the moment. We'll get as much progress as we can today and see where we end up.

[Ephelyon]

Cheers!

 

There's this one that's appeared in Redstone too and I've not found a way to get through to them to report a bug as a "business" user. Tried the Feedback app but to no avail. This one is definitely reproduceable...

[Mic_Impero]

Keep pursuing your own channels on that one too and if I can get anywhere with it i'll let you know in the other thread.

[Ephelyon]

Thanks, and will do. What would be most helpful is to find out what the official channel is for business users to report bugs.

[timbo343]

So we had a teacher's machine perform the black screen post login problem and ive extracted the logs from power on to force shutdown and highlighted the DCOM errors which only come about when we have this issue.

 

If anyone has any ideas, please post back on here. We are on Impero 5.4.31

BlackScreenPostLogin.xlsx

[Ephelyon]

{7006698D-2974-4091-A424-85DD0B909E23} is the Windows Insider Service - could try setting that to Disabled (GPP setting)?