Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Mysterious Vista KSOD (blacK Screen Of Death)

It has been reported on a few Vista systems where the system boots up to a black screen with a mouse cursor. As quoted from LogBlog:
"KSOD Defined: Where after a reboot the Windows Vista PC boots up to a black screen with a white mouse cursor and nothing else ever loads (no logon screen, etc). Safe mode does the same thing. Last Known Good configuration and System Restore do not fix it except in rare cases where performing a System Restore to 1 month ago or earlier does (thanks Mike Katz for figuring that out)."
According to sources, the problem is related to the RPC service running under the LocalSystem account as opposed to the NT Authority\NetworkService account. Although the work-around is quite technical and should not be done by the inexperienced, it has been found to be successful. It can be found at "Windows Vista Black Screen with Mouse Cursor Only Issue."

To help track down the "trigger" (i.e., a 3rd party service or software update or other unique combination), if you have been impacted, please help track down the solution by downloading the Sydi server inventory script http://sydiproject.com/download/ and email the output to Susan Bradley (susan-at-msmvps.com).

References:

How to fix the Vista KSOD (blacK Screen Of Death)
The Mysterious Black Screen of Death - Is It Vista?
Vista Black screen of death -- we still need a reason
Vista - Mysterious Black Screen of Death Solution





Remember - "A day without laughter is a day wasted."
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this info, Corrine. I have yet to encounter this, but it is always best to be in front of this sort of thing.

Go Penn State (and UB, too)!

Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

That last comment was from me, C.

-Brian (AKA The Dean)

Corrine said...

Hi, Brian.

The game tomorrow should be pretty exciting.

Happy New Year to you also.

Anonymous said...

The link is broken. For those like me that found this page and wanted to try to follow the advice, here is the working link:


http://sbsc.techcareteam.com/?p=325



Daf

Corrine said...

Thank you, Daf. I updated the original post with the working link.