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Microsoft Investigates Windows 7 "Black Screen of Death"
duguk writes "Microsoft has confirmed that it is investigating a problem described as the 'black screen of death,' which affects Windows 7 — and reports suggest it affects Vista and XP, too. The firm said it was looking into reports that suggest its latest security update, released on Tuesday 25 November, caused the problem. The error means that users of Windows 7 and earlier operating systems see a totally black screen after logging on to the system." Update: 12/01 22:35 GMT by KD : Microsoft now says that its November Windows updates are not causing the BlackSOD: "The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports."
Turns out it was just affecting a bunch of old people who kept forgetting to turn their monitors on.
I AM A SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR!!!
I guess they don't have to change the acronym then. Saves on Apple and Microsoft's marketing budgets next year! First Post!
Securing windows is like pushing water uphill with a sharp stick.
:-) No updates since 2003, system just stays up.
Firewall the bugger & leave it be. Works for me
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
i was getting tired of the blue screen
"You can have any screen of death color you want, as long as it's black"
Table-ized A.I.
Did anybody think to check the power cord?
It's nice to see they decided to forgo the cryptic error messages and offer the goth crowd a nice abyss to stare into.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Had this the other day (Win7 Ultmate, Q6600 8GB RAM) it sat for a couple of minutes (there was some disk activity). Afterwards everything was fine; I chalked it up to an update and looks as though I was right.
The headline should read "Microsoft finds way to make an Operating System 100% secure".
Once the Black (screen of) Death Security Pack is installed, the computer locks up after login, meaning the user will not be able to surf to dangerous pages, will not be the victim of even the most clever social engineering hacks, and best of all won't see any spam any more, ever.
Users protected by the BsoDSP can feel free to emerge from their basements and experience RealWorld 1.0. It's like a MMORPG, but with real sex.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
After hundreds of hours of diagnostics I realized that my eyes were closed.
The issue is not limited to Win7 but effects most versions of windows. A ACL bug causes the black screen http://www.prevx.com/blog/140/Black-Screen-woes-could-affect-millions-on-Windows--Vista-and-XP.html
On my MSI Wind netbook running Windows 7, I once woke the system from sleep and got a black screen. The machine was still working, the mouse cursor was on screen and moved with the touchpad, there was disk activity, it connected to the wireless network, caps lock/num lock were still responsive, but nothing else appeared on the screen and nothing I did made it work. I had to manually power the system off. I was able to wake the system from sleep many times before and after without any problems.
I didn't notice any updates that the problem could have been correlated with.
I guess a bunch of people were sitting around at Microsoft after watching Spinal Tap and decided to do a tribute patch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I had this happen a year or so ago on a Server 2003 box and never could find the actual cause. I don't know if the fix is the same in this case, but in my case it was simple:
Check out [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors] - if everything is set to [0 0 0], modify those values to something other than black. The easiest thing to do, actually, is to export that key from another box that's good, then import on the box that's got the problem.
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
This happened at my workplace, and I was the one who had to fix it. I think it was a corrupted update for XP, because it happened right after one. I had to perform a repair using the install disk, fun. Not all were affected, just the ones that had auto update turned on, instead of just notification.
Anyone know if some descendant of WGA is part of Win 7? The description of the problem in TFA (and also the corresponding Inq article reminds me of a botched WGA "software self-help" thing.
Of course, it could just be a garden-variety bug in something besides WGA.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
11/24 my windows machine is working perfectly,. Been up for over a month and fully activated (I bought the $30 Win 7 prof. EDU discount). Turn off my computer the same night (vacation).
11/28 come back from vacation turn my computer on and it updates itself with the 11/25 patches. As soon as they are installed all of a sudden my copy is no longer genuine and I get all the warnings.
Spend 2 hours with Microsoft last night. product key is valid. They tell me that windows updater is corrupted and I need to reinstall the entire OS. I was told it is an "issue" when doing a custom upgrade from Vista.
Now this article is out I am wondering if their patches tried to tighten some DRM and broke a lot more then being reported.
Screens of Death are *such* a cliche.
The error means that users of Windows 7 and earlier operating systems...
Whew! I'm so relieved I'm running Windows 8 on my main pc. My server running Windows 3.11 is probably in trouble though, I'll have to see...
The television will not be revolutionized.
It's something video related, I've seen this bug in the two machines (Win7, can't speak for Vista) I own and for some reason the monitor get "reset" to 59 Hz instead of 60 Hz and I get the black screen. The funny thing is that is the LCD lamp is not turned on but the screen does, so if you put some light in front of the screen you'll still be able to see something in the screen. This one and a USB bug that prevents the mouse getting detected was sufficient to go back to XP. I can't believe how these bugs pass QC. And sorry for my possibly bad english. Carlos
Well if you experience this issue from an update, would "Last known good configuration" not resolve this?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I told Microsoft I wanted a simpler user interface, next thing you know... Windows 7 black screen of death!
I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea...
They need to link it to the color picker. Black and Blue really kind of kick you when you're down. Adding bright friendly colors would help soften the experience. If possible adding a splash screen would be nice. "You're Fucked" in big friendly letters would be more helpful than blue or black.
Play Solitaire?
It also shipped with Calculator and Pinball. Loads of fun right there.
Reply to That ||
Different Color, Same Story.
On a dual boot system, hadn't used vista in a while. This is seriously what happened.
6 PM or so -- start boot up process into vista.
6:45 -- get login screen, then screen goes black. Hard drive thrashing.
7:00 -- screen still black.
8:00 -- screen still black, decided to reboot.
10 AM -- vista still booting, decided I didn't really need to use vista that bad.
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
This is news? Nothing new here.
I removed an expired copy of Kaspersky AV from a Vista laptop yesterday, did a wndows-update and installed free AVG. On rebooting it black-screened.
in that instance another forced reboot brought the system back as normal - I have no explanation
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
first was while playing a game online, and I though it was the game that crashed. Black screen, nothing worked, but the background music from the game kept playing. I waited longer than 5 minutes to see if the game would exit. When it did not I got suspicios since protected memory in 7 should not have allowed the gamr to crash the kernel. NOTHIGN was in the error logs related to it (other than the obligitory "you did not shut down properly" errors after I hit the reset button on the tower.
Next day, I had just turned it on about 20 minutes earlier, and the only thing running was Opera. Same deal, complete lock up.
7 has been running great on this machine since the day it hit my MAPS dowload queue and I installed it. Not one crash prior except an issue installing HP's printer system first time around (second try, it worked flawlessly).
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Is this what you get when windows fail to start up blue screen of death?
I just had to rebuild our CEO's Lenovo because of this problem. The worst part was that Lenovo absolutely refused to help because the laptop was purchased with Vista and upgraded to XP. Why do they even allow that option if they will not support it?
Just boot to terminal, and restore your xorg.config
You had windows installed.
But in an effort to push Windows7 footprint small enough to be used in netbooks, thus eventually killing WinXP, they have sacrificed this improved version, going back even farther than XP's blue screen of death to black screen. It is truly sad, Microsoft is not even able to improve the Screen of Death experience.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I can't wait to get the red screen of life !
'Ah ha!' said the blind man, as he fell into the hole.
Eventually, even Microsoft had to learn that black is the new blue.
UNIX: Find it, fsck it, forget it.
I had the "Black Screen of Death" happen in the past week on two full-patched (and legal) Windows Vista 32-bit machines after recent patches. Both times the display wouldn't come back up. The system did not display anything when access via Microsoft Remote Desktop, VNC, and Dameware Utilites Mini Remote Control--these are all various ways to access a machine remotely. However, the systems was still allowing access to file and printer shares and I could perform remote administration via various utilities and agents but I couldn't get anything to display. I was able to force a safe shutdown and restart remotely. Since then both machines have been fine. I had initially chalked this up to a random Windows error but today's news has led me to reconsider whether this is in fact a bug.
I could have sworn this happened to me yesterday, my screen just went all black! wtf Microsoft Ear Gauges
I have tried LKGC dozens of times when it seemed plausible it would help. I think it worked twice. My experience with System Restore is similar.
After logging in yesterday on Windows 7 everything appeared to be going as normally but all I got was the standard blue desktop and Explorer never started, but I fixed it with a reboot.
I wonder if it had anything to do with this particular bug.
We'll have to find a new name for the day the last Windows pc is shut down.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
>> The error means that users of Windows 7 and earlier operating systems see a totally black screen after logging on to the system ... well at least its better than Vista.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
---
Microsoft Windows Feed @ Feed Distiller
I work at a retailer that uses custom POS systems running on XP. These are low-end systems (512-1024 MB RAM). After the latest round of patches, many of these systems either ran out of system resources or would simply blue-screen and reboot. I originally attributed it to a patch + Intel video driver + Symantec, since I could disable either SEP, or the Intel video driver, and all would be fine. We originally had end users hit F8 and roll back to the Last Known Good, and that would fix it...until patches are applied again. Interestingly enough, I've found that reducing the shared video memory in the systems' BIOS to 8 MB (from 32 MB) does the trick for these systems. I can basically re-create the entire problem by re-installing XP SP3 + all patches, latest drivers, then install Symantec, and the problem starts.
That is all
white letter pages only please.
I'm not big on updates - especially from some of the big software companies: Microsoft, Adobe, Apple. They seem to consistently slow a system down over time, and occasionally cause serious problems. But if I want to get more mileage out of a Windows box by turning off auto updates, I at least apply service packs. If you are going to go no-updates you should not only be behind a firewall, but have an up-to-date antimalware app. Even then, an unupdated Windows system is significantly further from "perfectly safe" than an updated one.
This problem has existed in Windows for ages, and it's probably a problem caused by third party software and drivers.
I had this happen on my personal PC with Windows XP Pro a few days ago. I had been using the PC for a while and needed a break, so I locked the screen saver and stepped away. I came back later and the screen was black like power management had kicked in, but I don't have Windows configured to turn off the display. I moved the mouse but got no response. I run VNC server on this PC, so I used another PC to attempt a connection. The connection was successful, but the display was corrupt and basically unusable. I was able to navigate the PC's "Start" menu via the VNC session and shut the PC down. After a reboot, the PC worked properly and I haven't had this happen again.
I suppose it could have been some sort of problem with the display driver, but this PC NEVER crashes or locks up and this was definitely an unexpected occurrence.
Is THAT what you do on your machine? Because I notice you haven't otherwise said what you DO do on it. Just "you're wrong".
I've seen this pretty frequently for the past 5 years. After log on (automatic or manual), the screen is powered but black, save for a regular cursor that can be moved around. Ctrl+Alt+Del and other keyboard and special key shortcuts do nothing. It's usually been because some malware or antivirus corrupted some component of Windows. Sometimes removing the malware in safe mode has worked (if the black screen wasn't occurring there), sometimes a repair install was necessary. Rarely has a reformat been needed when it's still doing the black screen thing.
Okay, I just changed the background on my Windows XP to black and removed all the icons. Now I can sit and stare at the screen. No need to upgrade anymore.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
MS switching that Windows dialog box we all love so much from blue to black may just be a green thing.
'cause, you know- a black CRT uses less energy.
With the competition or some other reason, GPU manufacturers started to push beta graphics drivers to users more than ever. If user gets greeted with some beta version of driver on official site and his fellow gamer friends keep telling how great the latest unstable driver is, you can't blame him.
There are expensive services/sites who just tracks beta/unstable/bleeding edge drivers and provide you updates. 99% of times, you don't need to take such risk but they -of course- sell you that service.
People expects some sort of magic from those unstable/beta drivers. At least on Windows 7, MS is supposed to be in charge of WHQL driver updates of popular cards. I would stick with them until SP1 at least.
So Microsoft is not telling anyone which update is doing that?
What the hell are we supposed to block in WSUS? As much as we want we can't block the entire group of fucking operating systems.
Blue. It's so pre-economic crash.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
MS hasn't learned from Vista at all. One of the biggest mistakes they did with Vista was not admitting people are actually having problems and treated them (their customers) as bunch of morons not knowing how to use their OS.
Windows 7 shipped and MS really got some credit from media this time, even from Mac fanatics. This thing happens and if you read MS responses, they are in denial mode just like first days of Vista.
How many Stanford etc. geniuses it takes to do a basic thing like "We hear you, we will investigate the issue and we aren't going home until we figure it out.". Forget official announcement, what about a fake leak on some easy to find site that will signal that you are aware of the issue?
Does MS believe in some evil plot against them now? Like, all those comments etc. are written by Steve Jobs&Linus together?
ps: Could you imagine a Quicktime component could prevent OS X from booting? I saw it, reported, Apple thanked me and fixed it overnight.
racist ! (in a black coffee kind of sense) sue the bastards!
On about a third of my boots into the Win7 RC. I figured, eh, that's Windows for ya, and besides, it's an RC. Also, you can't shut down without sitting around for ten minutes to make sure that every program feels like closing, every update is allowed or denied, etc. Also, Java wants to update about ten minutes into each session, grabbing focus, you know, right when you're getting into a game. I can tell it yes, no, don't ask again, whatever: it never, ever gives up.
Since the early days, monitors signal to system you know. Especially if I had that issue and a digitally connected monitor, I would try recycling (power on/off) monitor or carefully replugging it.
It may cause display to refresh. As people say monitor actually displays things, just the backlight is off. I haven't got a slightest clue how can one manage to do it. Is it in DPMI specs? DVI specs?
Folks, Why on earth are people still bothering with the crap software produced by Microsoft. Their brand-spanking-new Windows7 is turning out to be buggy. To quote Gomer Pyle: "Surprise surprise surprise".
Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again? ... OK, well, the button on the side. Is it glowing? ... Yeah, you need to turn it on. Err, the button turns it on. Yeah, you do know how a button works, don't you? No, not on clothes. No, there you go, I just heard it come on. No, that's the music you hear when it comes on. No, that's the music you hear when... I'm sorry, are you from the past?
At least we can look on the bright side. Because it's black, PC was telling the truth in that Mac commercial when he said "It's not gonna have any of the problems Vista had, Trust me.". Cheeky bastards.
November 25 was a Wednesday. You're like my professors. All of them. I swear, they do this every time.
Anyway, the article says it was November 10, which was a Tuesday.
I think this is a great example of creativity. Microsoft managed to completely change up the dated blue screen, while keeping the acronym that we all know and love from becoming obsolete. Though I do suppose that the text should be a different color than the background...
The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.
BLack scrEEn of Death
Persian Project Management Software as a Service
This probably means the user needs to turn on their computer.
If we follow the convention set by CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK), it should really be KSOD.
Silliness aside, I wonder if botnets might not serve a semi-useful function for serious noobs -- a botnetted machine might ultimately be more stable than just a virused-and-malwared machine, inasmuch as the botnet operator has a vested interest in keeping the box up and running. I dimly recall reading here on /. about research showing some botnets aggressively removing malware from newly captured machines.
So, for the true computing noob, might a botnet infection not actually have a stabilizing effect? Let the botnet operator take care of system security.
(No, I'm not being silly, nor am I actually espousing this course of action. I am wondering aloud if certain parasitic actors in the internet ecology might not do some incidental benefit to the others in the course of their own nefarious activities.)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
It's no bug, it's a feature. Windows saves power by reducing the monitor contrast and brightness to 0. Furthermore, it turns off the Video Card and unplugs the monitor from the power socket. Then blinds you.
...I just had a chat with Steve, he said "you're lucky we didn't implement the population control routine; we couldn't figure out whether we should use inherent OS radiation or the hammer summoning algorythm on your testicles".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I am so through with the blue. Black is a pleasant change, and I welcome it.
> Microsoft now says that its November Windows updates are not causing
> the BlackSOD: "The company has found those reports to be inaccurate
> and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently
> released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports."
"We know those reports are inaccurate because we already knew about this before releasing the November updates and so it couldn't possibly be related to the November updates. It is an issue that we are having considerable difficulties fixing hence not being fixed in the November updates and hoped that nobody would have commented about it so soon."
yep booted a laptop (vista 32) after the update. Black screened not responsive. Hard boot again and it started working...
Love the idea of MS "investigation" to say it did not cause the problem.