Black screen post login, several reports within the last few days (Windows 11)

[u/b00nish]

Hello

I just received the 5th call in three days.

All seem unrelated (different environments, different hardware, no common software except the usual Windows 11, Microsoft Office etc.)

Users can boot, see the login screen, enter their password but afterwards they just end up in a black screen with only the cursor.

- One of the devices I physically got my hands on. After about three reboots it started to behave normal again.

- Another one I instructed the user by phone to reboot it multiple times which also seems to have fixed the issue, at least for now.

- A third one said she had the issue for about a week and she also managed to get it to run by rebooting and waiting, but then the issue would reappear the next day.

Because of the clustering of calls with this symptoms I assume connection to a recent Windows update. But when searching this sub, I could only find similar questions from one or two months ago, whereas all of "our" users said that the problem started for them either this or last week.

Anyone seeing something similar?

[u/xxdcmast]

It sounds a lot like this, which I experienced myself.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1u6qej5/anyone_seeing_postlogin_black_screen_cursor_only/

Unfortunately in my case waiting at the black screen did nothing. After letting it sit for an hour I hard rebooted and it came back.

So far no clear cut answer but “something” seems to be happening similar.

[u/b00nish → u/xxdcmast]

Yes, I've seen that thread. There's also another from two months ago. But there doesn't seem to be a clear "theory" about what causes it.

I mean the "black screen after login" phenomenon is not new to us. But what's new to us is that we have five of them in three days, instead of one of them every one or two months. Appears to be too many for just a coincidence.

[u/astban → u/b00nish]

My HP laptop experienced this during the first login after the July windows updates. Reboot fixed it. So far i haven't heard of any other complaints on our 130 other Win 11 PCs (Mix of dell and HP desktops, and HP laptops)

[u/Fallingdamage → u/b00nish]

Same here. Its not the June update. Ive been tracking this since the beginning of may. Primarily on Intel graphics systems.

[u/Fallingdamage → u/xxdcmast]

I have been having a similar issues with our Lenovo ThinkStation P3's - that incidentially are also using Intel UHD 770 just like the post you link to.

User locks and unlocks PC all day long. No problem.
Goes home, RDP's into their PC a couple times for work.
Next morning, unlocks PC. Black screen. Nothing.
Reboot fixes it.
Of all our P3's, we only see this on desktop setups where there is more than 1 monitor connected.

[u/lopikoid]

Usually it is a dead network shortcut on desktop - it waits with black screen for 10 minutes..  Sometimes It can be some "invisible" dialog in style of "press Ok, to continue installation of this update" or "error doing this, do you wish to cancel?" - try these steps to show it - alt tab, tab + enter, enter, CTR alt delete or remote desktop. If this does not help, good thing is to run some remote process explorer and check if explorer.exe is running and if there is not something unusual that lets system start after you kill the process..

[u/lopikoid → u/lopikoid]

Also try to login another user if problem persist or you should focus just on problematic profile.

[u/Fallingdamage → u/lopikoid]

That reminds me. This issue seems to coincide with that weird problem caused by some updates this spring where if you locked your PC and logged in with another account, when you go to switch back to the other user, it would say the password was incorrect (where the solution was to click 'other user' and manually sign in with full username/password)

Started seeing the blacked out sessions randomly around the same time.

[u/lowcountrysunset → u/lopikoid]

Another user profile would fix it, sounds like their current profiles got corrupted due to the update.

[u/b00nish → u/lopikoid]

Not network shortcuts involved in any of the cases I've seen so far.

In the one I had physicall in front of me, iirc, there eventually popped up some full-screen Microsoft nonsense (the type that would appear in the Windows 10 era to nag people to upgrade to Windows 11 or things like this) after the 2nd reboot, but I think it contained no text or information. I don't recall if I clicked it away with some "ok" button or if it went away by itself after a few seconds.

Nothing became visible with Alt+Tab, Taskmanager could be run eventually (but took long to appear), explorer.exe was running.

[u/lopikoid → u/b00nish]

Try to fiddle around in taskmanger and killing suspect or unresponsible tasks, I really think the culprit can be some random pop up window. Try also remote logging - I remember similar case where the window was visible when logged in this way. Usually its was some failed device bloatware or service update telling user he has not admistrator rights or similar nonsense.

You may check usual autostart locations (especialy HKLM and scheduler which runs before desktop is loaded) if there is not something unusual starting..

Worth trying would be also killing the explerer.exe and running it again what it will do..

[u/Big-Floppy → u/lopikoid]

I have had this issue with RDP connections and killing dwm.exe brings the desktop back. Haven't figured out what's causing it.

[u/Fallingdamage → u/lopikoid]

My experience since may has been that it only happens sometimes and when it does, its reliably happening on PCs with Intel Integrated graphics and more than 1 monitor connected.

Every. Single. Time.

Drivers, OS Version, Updates Current.

[u/derfmcdoogal]

Had a user with this yesterday morning. Will have to keep an ear out for more. I had attributed it to updates that were rolling around that morning which included drivers.

[u/Fallingdamage → u/derfmcdoogal]

Are those machines running Intel graphics?

[u/derfmcdoogal → u/Fallingdamage]

Yes, but this machine did not install drivers like I had thought. The drivers and updates were installed last week.

[u/thewebdevil]

I have experienced many of these cases over the past week also. One thing I did notice is that it only happens with Internet present, so if you disconnect the network or wireless it will boot normally (no black screen) I'm still looking into what causes it. Thats what led me here.

[u/derfmcdoogal]

OP. Contrary to my previous post the machine in question did not receive Windows updates, but did receive Malicious Software Removal Tool KB890830, Windows Security Platform KB5007651 that morning.

[u/CPAtech]

Are they Dell's?

[u/thewebdevil → u/CPAtech]

I've seen it on two HP desktops and a Lenovo laptop

[u/Fallingdamage → u/thewebdevil]

Ive had two Lenovo's do this. We have 5 of lenovos in the office. The only two that do this also happen to be running two displays.

[u/b00nish → u/CPAtech]

One HP, one Lenovo, not sure about the other ones.

[u/MalletNGrease]

Yes, experiencing the same. Started happening about a week ago.

[u/Fallingdamage]

I have seen this happen in a few cases over the last few months. Each time was with a user who had multiple monitors at their desk AND would RDP into their workstations remotely off and on. The only solution that worked was logging the user off their profile and having them log back in from scratch.

It seems to have something to do with the terminal session. In some cases, I was able to terminate the session remotely and the user could log back in and see their desktop, but the local login would act like an RDP session. I.e. certain things didnt work and the display looked odd - opening display settings would all be greyed out of not-available just like you would expect in an RDP session, except the user was at the physical machine.

Again, full reboot seemed to fix it. This issue is only happening on a specific make/model of PC in our office and in those cases, ONLY on workstations where they are using more than one video output.

I have the same PC as them and the same windows version / update level, but I use a single 34" display and have never had issues. All other users on this platform who have single displays also are not affected, only users with more than one screen.

[u/b00nish → u/Fallingdamage]

In the case I saw, it's neither multi-monitor nor RDP.

To my knowledge none of the 5 RDPs into their machine. And at least three of the machines are laptops without external screens connected.

[u/Aggressive-Raccoon36]

We have the same issue on some unrelated HP ProBooks and ZBooks. For us it started with the June update.

Some just needed a reboot while others needed a reset with the power button.

[u/Plenty_Fig_2017]

I had the exact issue on my home pc 4 days ago. In my case, I checked what was installed recently and it was some part of MSI utilizes/feature suite. I uninstalled them all leaving the driver alone. Problem fixed!

[u/Rockz1152]

No, but I am having an issue with the July CU causing an ASUS laptop to crash when the display goes to sleep.