Vista black screen of death

[dsawan]

Hi folks. I am sure you have heard of this beofre and I tried troubleshooting but still cant fix this. I get the black screen with no destop icons excpet the taskbar and start menu. I cant access folders or go into c drive. it happens in safe and normal windowws modes. i ran antivirus and no go. i have avast which runs in realtime and was updated today. i tried vista recovery dsik to repair windows and no go there. i am able to get internet and email as i write this. it was working fine around a few hrs back. All i was doing was burning sf2 files to cd to backup. My hardrive still has 10GB disk space. I dont know what else? any advice here?

[p14u2nv]

Go here as this is the MS fix for the Black SOD although there could be a multitude of issues casusing this;

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=977675&kbln=en-us

You can also try this;

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.

This tool may 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 to remove malware during this time then this fix will have a high probability of working.

Hope this helps

[dsawan]

Hi, thx. i found the fix. See here:

http://s0.2mdn.net/1833838/HP_ESS_Storage_Virtualization_Betanews_Welcome_Ad. html?rfp=http://www.betanews.com/article/Tracking-Vistas-elusive-Black-Screen-of-Death/1245254312

[p14u2nv]

Well it seems you lucked out and quickly consideing there are now at least a dozen or so "fixes" out there depending on what issues folks have encountered or determined as the root cause of this bizarre behavior.

[dsawan]

Hi again. thx for reply. I am now having black screen again. Thought I fixed ti from article above but it cam back friday night. i tried your fixes and no good. i tried changing my nvidia drivers and no good. I keep searching off net but it still keeps happening. I just cant get desktop to show. Nor can i get to c drive or any folders. The programs are there, the taskbar and mouse cursor work. i can access email and intenet. Only soltion s so far is a new user account but I cant access my files if I do this. I tried to repair using vista disk. Only other thing is a factory restore but I risk losing all my files. Any idea here?

[mariereid]

Hi, dsawan; you probably know a whole lot more than I do about this. Can you do a system restore? I think you have a choice to save files or not when you do a system recovery, but I would not trust that. I have had problems with certain types of discs. Some have caused minor crashes. :salute:

[dsawan]

Hi, I looked into that but the system restore only goes to yesterday so there is no earlier time. I ghuess illl have to use the other user account for now until microsoft issues a solution.

[p14u2nv]

Ok I'll ask around and see what the latest fix was/is. Have you downloaded ANY NEW programs just prior to this happening? I ask as I seem to remember one fix that involved a new spyware program. I'll see what I can find out...just can't promise anything as it seems for every few KSODs that gets fixed up there is yet one more popping up that involves another angle and strategy if you will. Just don't count on MS to do anything more than what little they have done already to fix this issue(s).

Which OS are you using by the way, I've been assuming it's Vista but 32 or 64?

[dsawan]

Hi, sorry I was away. I had a 4 day weekend and blew it trying to fix this damn prob. Finally I noticed I can create a new user account and still access the corupted profile. However, on esolution on web was to copy everything from the old to new. When I did this the pc was slowwwwwwwwwwwwww. Basically unworkable. As i write this, i can access the old one and still run stuff. So no files lost. Just you have to kep a window open to access the old profile from the new one. Its vista 32 bit. I suspected silent hunter 5 causing this but cant tell.