Solution for black screen of death for Windows XP, Vista, 7

Prevx offers a free fix for Windows Black Screen

Firstly, there appears to be many causes of the black screen issue. The symptoms are very distinctive and troublesome. After starting your Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, W2K, W2K3 or W2K8 PC or server the system appears normal. However, after logging on there is no desktop, task bar, system tray or side bar. Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window. Even this window might be minimized making it hard to see.

If you have these symptoms you can safely try our free Black Screen Fix. It will fix the most common cause we have seen of this issue. Running the fix program is easy under normal circumstances, simply download with your browser using the link above and run the program. However, if you are trying to do this from the PC which has the black screen it is a bit more tricky. In these circumstances follow the procedure below:

1) Restart your PC
2) Logon and wait for the black screen to appear
3) Make sure your PC should be able to connect to the internet (black screen does not appear to affect this)
4) Press the CTRL, ALT and DEL keys simultaneously
5) When prompted, Click Start Task Manager
6) In Task Manager Click on the Application Tab
7) Next Click New Task
8) Now enter the command:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" "http://info.prevx.com/download.asp?GRAB=BLACKSCREENFIX"

Note this command assumes that you are using internet explorer as your browser, if not substitute your browser path and file details for those of iexplore.exe or use the Browser option of Task manager to locate it.

9) Click OK and your browser should start up and begin the download process
10) When prompted for the download Click run, the black screen fix program will download and run to automatically fix the issue.
11) Now restart your PC and the black screen problem will hopefully be gone.

I must stress that this tool will not fix all black screen issues. There can be many causes. But if your black screen woes began in the last 2 weeks after a Windows update or after running any security program (including Prevx) to remove malware during this time then this fix will have a high probability of working.

If you Google Black Screen then you will find a whopping 80Million plus results, mostly dominated by people searching for a fix to this problem. Thousands of users have resorted to reloading Windows as a last ditch effort to fix the problem, avoid that at all cost. We hope we can help a good many of you avoid the need to reload.

By the way - the cause of this recent crop of Black Screen appears to be a change in the Windows Operating Systems lock down of registry keys. This change has the effect of invalidating several key registry entries if they are updated without consideration of the new ACL rules being applied. For reference the rule change does not appear to have been publicised adequately, if at all, with the recent Windows updates.

In researching this issue we have identified at least 10 different scenarios which will trigger the same black screen conditions. These appear to have been around for years now. But our advice is try our tool first. If it works great. If it doesn't you are no worse off.

Good luck.

Dave Kennerley
Prevx Support

Update: In response to requests for Patch details:

The conditions under which the actual black screen is triggered are spasmodic. Some test systems always trigger the condition, others are less consistent. The windows patches which seem common to the issue arising are listed below:

KB915597 and KB976098

When the issue occurs the WinLogon Shell entry for Explorer.Exe becomes invalidated. The entry exists perfectly in the registry but is unusable/inaccessible and is therefore ignored by the OS resulting in the desktop and task bar not being loaded. This entry is frequently the target of malware so tightening access to it is probably a good thing. However, the black screen condition is the only sign of the problem, leaving non technical users with a major challenge.


Hope this helps you.


Prevx Support

Latest Windows security patches trigger black screen

 

You're starting up your Windows (7, Vista, XP, NT, W2K, W2K3 or W2K8 PC or server) and everything looks normal. You log in, and your faced with a black screen with a single open My Computer Explorer window on it. You're wondering what happened.

Well, if this started happening after you updated your OS with the latest batch of security patches and then you tried to run a malware-removing software, the from Prevx

It seems that the problem has arisen because of a change to the OS' lock down of registry keys. Namely, the Access Control List, which is responsible of generating desktop features and interacts with said registry keys while doing it, stopped working as it should because this last round of Windows patches effected some changes to them.

Another option for fixing the problem is to manually modify the registry settings, but this should be done only by people who know what they're doing.

While investigating this issue, the Prevx team discovered there are at least 10 more different things that trigger the black screen. Their advice is to try their tool first because it can do no harm even if it doesn't do fix the problem.

UPDATE November 30, 2009: It looks like the problem is not related to Microsoft. More information at the MSRC. will probably make it all better.

Recent Windows security patches causing 'black screen of death'

Updated 1:50 p.m., Dec. 1: Microsoft says black screens were not caused by the recent Windows security patches. Full story.
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A recent security update released by Microsoft reportedly is causing "black screens of death" for some Windows users.

According to U.K. security company Prevx, the problem is caused by changes in the Access Control List, which manages the permissions of a given Windows user. The changes invalidate the Windows registry keys of some applications, Dave Kennerley of Prevx wrote in a blog post.
"The symptoms are very distinctive and troublesome," Kennerley wrote. "After starting your Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, W2K, W2K3 or W2K8 PC or server the system appears normal. However, after logging on there is no desktop, task bar, system tray or side bar. Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window. Even this window might be minimized making it hard to see."
Prevx, which makes security software, released a fix for the "black screen of death" that anyone can use. The fix is only for this recent up-cropping of black screens caused by Microsoft security patches released in November; there are other causes of black screens.
The free fix and step-by-step instructions are available here.
Microsoft said it is aware of the issue and sent seattlepi.com the following statement:

• Microsoft is investigating reports that its latest release of security updates is resulting in system issues for some customers.
• Based on our investigation so far we can say that we're not seeing this as an issue from our support organization.
• The issues as described also do not match any known issues that have been documented in the security bulletins or KB articles.
• As always, we encourage customers to review the security bulletin and related KB articles and test and deploy security updates.
• If customers do encounter an issue with security updates, we encourage them to contact our Customer Service and Support group for no-charge assistance. Customers can contact CSS using the information at http://support.microsoft.com/security.

Via PCWorld