Skylark56 Posted October 22, 2025 Posted October 22, 2025 Wonder if anybody has had any issues regarding Windows just crashing explorer and going to a black screen with just the cursor? It was a minor issue to start with and it seems to be growing exponentially. Have attempted the following: - Mixture of Dell Latitude 3310/3190 and HP 255 G7s, all W11 compliant and with 8GB RAM so hardware isn't a limitation. Both W10 and W11 doing this however (22H2/23H2/24H2/25H2). - Rebuilt from scratch, still does it after logging on. - Fully updated on latest version of 25H2 with all current Dell/HP drivers. - Devices will randomly fix themselves at random point (there was an Intune Store issue last week on the health centre, but this hasn't fixed the issue). - Device comes up with the Shutdown/Restart box before the black screen crash on some devices. - Device seems to be using a lot of CPU for processes such as Sophos, OMA-DM and AppX. - Rebooting explorer fixes some temporarily, but most of the time it will crash again. Just sort of banging my head against a wall trying to nail down what this issue is as it is slowly growing.
3s-gtech Posted October 22, 2025 Posted October 22, 2025 Any management agents running like Impero/StudentKeeper?
Skylark56 Posted October 22, 2025 Author Posted October 22, 2025 (edited) Quote Any management agents running like Impero/StudentKeeper? We have Senso running, which I doubt would be the issue as we have it running for student and staff devices but it only seems to impact Student Devices primarily. Edited October 22, 2025 by Skylark56
Spenketh Posted October 22, 2025 Posted October 22, 2025 (edited) I have experienced this issue for about a month or so now. I had an inkling that Senso might be the cause and after I reached out to their support, they confirmed it. The app logging seems to be crashing explorer.exe after logging in. They said the only thing you can do is disable app logging in any policies and that they have no fix for this right now (and no ETA). Edited October 22, 2025 by Spenketh
Skylark56 Posted October 24, 2025 Author Posted October 24, 2025 On 22/10/2025 at 12:50, Spenketh said: I have experienced this issue for about a month or so now. I had an inkling that Senso might be the cause and after I reached out to their support, they confirmed it. The app logging seems to be crashing explorer.exe after logging in. They said the only thing you can do is disable app logging in any policies and that they have no fix for this right now (and no ETA). Wow, I had an inkling it may have been Senso, I did notice the CPU usage does spike significantly when logging in, and the black screen does fix itself when the CPU usage drops and you restart explorer.exe, I believed Explorer was updating from the Microsoft Store as for some reason, Explorer and Windows run separately, and some versions aren't compatible with the other, odd scenario. Obviously disabling app logging sort of defeats the point of safeguarding using Senso, so obviously we aren't disabling this. I'll log it with Senso anyway to get more eyes on the problem from their side.
3s-gtech Posted October 24, 2025 Posted October 24, 2025 This behaviour dates back to the early days of Windows 10 when people still ran Impero. Not surprised it's still a thing with similar software, but it does seem that in doing this Senso is missing that critical step in that the device should remain useable with the software installed. 1
SchoolITGeek Posted November 12, 2025 Posted November 12, 2025 I'm assuming you guys spent an age trying to narrow this one down since the Summer break when we first became aware of the problem! I can also confirm that Senso cloud have suggesting changing the "Log and Block application execution:" setting to "Off" on our "Logging and Blocking" policy which for us is applied to ALL school devices. We were having this issue on different devices (all running Windows 11) new and old machines affecting everyone from SLT to students. I've suggested that Senso should send out a technical bulletin to schools as this wasn't easy for us to track down (assumed the normal Windows updates causing issues again mantra). We did look on EduGeek in the beginning, just as shame I noticed this post after I found the issue myself. I wonder if any of you also noticed this issue not just on logon, but during the day after the user had been logged on for some time. We also noticed "white" screens as well as "black" screens. Our temporary fix was ironically to use Senso cloud to start "explorer.exe" again.
Skylark56 Posted November 12, 2025 Author Posted November 12, 2025 5 minutes ago, SchoolITGeek said: I'm assuming you guys spent an age trying to narrow this one down since the Summer break when we first became aware of the problem! I can also confirm that Senso cloud have suggesting changing the "Log and Block application execution:" setting to "Off" on our "Logging and Blocking" policy which for us is applied to ALL school devices. We were having this issue on different devices (all running Windows 11) new and old machines affecting everyone from SLT to students. I've suggested that Senso should send out a technical bulletin to schools as this wasn't easy for us to track down (assumed the normal Windows updates causing issues again mantra). We did look on EduGeek in the beginning, just as shame I noticed this post after I found the issue myself. I wonder if any of you also noticed this issue not just on logon, but during the day after the user had been logged on for some time. We also noticed "white" screens as well as "black" screens. Our temporary fix was ironically to use Senso cloud to start "explorer.exe" again. Yeah we have tried all of these methods, to no avail sadly. I did say to Senso that I didn't want to turn off the Logging and Blocking policy as it was a key feature for Safeguarding. In the end, Senso said the issue was logged against V1 of Senso, and hadn't been logged yet for V2, so we just ramped up our migration to the V2 clients at our sites. So far, no black or white screens so its positive so far!
SchoolITGeek Posted November 12, 2025 Posted November 12, 2025 1 hour ago, Skylark56 said: Yeah we have tried all of these methods, to no avail sadly. I did say to Senso that I didn't want to turn off the Logging and Blocking policy as it was a key feature for Safeguarding. In the end, Senso said the issue was logged against V1 of Senso, and hadn't been logged yet for V2, so we just ramped up our migration to the V2 clients at our sites. So far, no black or white screens so its positive so far! We also had the same concerns from a Safeguarding viewpoint, however, you can keep all your policies website blocking and categories in the policy and just change the one drop down for "Log and Block application execution:" to "Off". My understanding is this just stops windows app logging and blocking, but not website logging and blocking. Basically, anything below the "Log and Block Website Activity:" will still be operational in the policy. That was my understanding with my call with them. 1
Bird97 Posted November 12, 2025 Posted November 12, 2025 We had something which sounds the same when we deployed a C++ distributable via group policy had loads of errors in event viewer
grahamd22 Posted November 26, 2025 Posted November 26, 2025 https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/kb5072911-multiple-symptoms-occur-after-provisioning-a-pc-with-a-windows-11-version-24h2-update-d2d30684-4e2b-47f5-9899-a00a8e0acb09
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