Black screen problems with Windows 10 at login

[Tefters]

Welcome to the hit and miss world of Windows 8.1+

Ran 8.1 for 2 years and had this sporadic issue followed by Windows 10 (all versions so far) and I don't run impero.

 

Dedicated more time to this issue then wish to count and just wait til you start patching the OS.

 

All I can say is good luck, I've accepted this now and if after 5 minutes there is no Desktop I have people button the machine.

 

Welcome to the new world, Windows 8 onwards is a lot more hungry and heavy then 7 was. I see improvement with SSD's but not much.

[ITGURU]

one of the reasons I dont use classroom management software! Also we used Ranger Remote in the early days and even that locked machines up. It's third party software tapping into Microsoft products , so i just keep the installs simple. We use VNC since day1 and the same version still works on Windows 10 anniversary edition. It was bad enough that even McAfee had to release a new agent update just to support the difference between win 10 and the anniversary edition.

[stgoodyeara]

The Start Screen Cache (aka TIleDataLayer i think it's called) was the deciding factor for us to go to LTSB as this was having a massive impact on our users. I might re-visit this issue again as we have a delprof script that runs when a machine is restarted or powered off.

 

We get the issue even with our domain admin account which has hardly anything in the userarea. If it was happening on users who had their user areas full, it would be happening to most staff. Instead, it happens to students rather than staff.

 

As for the MS fix, we have mandatory profiles for students, the key listed in the link you gave is already deleted from the Mandatory Profile when we set it up. I honestly think it's something to do with Impero. @stgoodyeara was going to remove impero from a room over half term to see if that made any difference.

 

We are looking at deploying LTSB2016 but hitting some sticking points at the moment.

 

I can confirm i've had a suite that was had regular black screens at logins (Serveral a day.) Upon removing impero we've not experienced this once. I think we've found our culprit. That said im not convinced its not a hardware specific because my LTSB 2015 bootcamped Macs have impero and they have never done it. Either way impero seems to be the fly in the oinkment as removing it resolved the issue.

[timbo343]

Jason at Impero managed to replicate the post black screen issue but not had it since he replicated it. Looks like its the waiting game with this one however, we have LTSB2016 on 2 suites, will be 3 by monday evening and out od 50 machines we've had it once since wednesday soooo maybe LTSB2016 is a little more stable.

[Ephelyon]

@Mic_Impero

 

I've been thinking about this issue.

 

I know Impero has a hook DLL that it injects into certain processes. Does it inject this into any of winlogon.exe, userinit.exe or explorer.exe? I wonder whether that might be the cause...

[Mic_Impero]

Hi @Ephelyon,

 

Not that I know of, but it's entirely possible. I'll send your suggestion over to QA and post back. Thank you for making it.

 

Mic

[Ephelyon]

Further information in support of this:

 

 

Maybe other schools affected by this could try excluding winlogon.exe, userinit.exe and explorer.exe in this way and see if that helps with the black screens in the meantime?

[timbo343]

Further information in support of this:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39879[/ATTACH]

 

Maybe other schools affected by this could try excluding winlogon.exe, userinit.exe and explorer.exe in this way and see if that helps with the black screens in the meantime?

 

Would blocking Winlogon.exe stop impero logging who logged on to that machine? We have deployed LTSB2016 out to about 100 machines since Monday and found that 1 has had the black screen when we used to be getting black screens nearly every day.

[Ephelyon]

It's all open to debate at the moment I think... could try it and see?

[alfatec]

Has anybody tried disabling the 'Connected User Experience and telemetry service'. I have recently disabled this service and have found that I hardly get any black screens now.

[timbo343]

Its another one to try i guess. This would be the spying service How To Disable Microsoft's 'Spying' Service On Windows 10 | Lifehacker Australia & http://www.askvg.com/truth-behind-disallowing-telemetry-and-data-collection-trick-in-windows-10/ Edited November 21, 2016 by timbo343

[alfatec]

Yes that is the one, it also causes alot of traffic between the workstations and the internet.

[timbo343]

Hmmm, its in the LTSB2016 build too, might have to disable it via GPO (added the link above on askvg.com) and disable the service.

 

Had another black screen today on LTSB2016, only the 1 machine though.

[alfatec]

The more Windows 10 beds in the lower number of black screens we are getting. We are using local profiles and once a user has logged in then they do not seem to get a black screen on subsequent logins.

[timbo343]

Had a black screen this morning on a machine which has just been freshly imaged last night and the Connected User Experience and Telemetry is disabled.

 

Looking through the event viewer, i see:

 

The CDPUserSvc_4e76f0 service failed to start due to the following error:

The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

 

which is related to more sync programs ERRORS Connected Devices Platform Service-CDP User Service-CDPusersvc - Windows 10 Forums & https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/c165a54a-4a69-441c-94a7-b5712b54385d/what-is-the-cdpusersvc-for-?forum=win10itprogeneral

 

So it might be another service to disable.

[timbo343]

Further information in support of this:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39879[/ATTACH]

 

Maybe other schools affected by this could try excluding winlogon.exe, userinit.exe and explorer.exe in this way and see if that helps with the black screens in the meantime?

 

You might be onto something here. The attached is from the log viewer on a machine that black screened which had just been imaged. I've now added userinit.exe into the injection exclusions.

[timbo343]

No black screens today with userinit.exe and explorer.exe added to the list of exceptions.

[Ephelyon]

Thanks, I'll now try the same thing...

[FragglePete]

I've added userinit.exe to our exception yesterday. No reports just yet. Watching this thread with great interest.

 

Pete

[steven_layton_sl]

Hi - can someone point me in the right direction of the injection exceptions setting in Impero? We're having this issue also.

[lmrogers]

On the Impero server go to Tools and then Injection Exclusions

[steven_layton_sl]

Many thanks - I've added "userinit.exe". Lets see what happens. Fingers crossed.

[timbo343]

Have a look in Impero Log viewer - Timeline to see if the user/machine is hanging at userinit.exe too. I've added explorer.exe too as userinit.exe calls explorer.exe to show the UI.

[FragglePete]

No reports yesterday after excluding userinit.exe - whereas we were getting a couple or so a day. Too early to tell just yet, but watching with great interest.

 

Pete

[timbo343]

Our logons for Win 10 seems to have got quicker too since excluding these 2 EXEs. When i say logon times i mean the time it takes to show the desktop image and start button. The machines used to hang for a little while before.