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User Account Black Screens

1K views 25 replies 6 participants last post by  Macboatmaster 
#1 ·
OS - W10
Users - 2 x Standard (Local) Users Accounts. 1 x Administrator Account

On one of my PC's I have 2 standard (Local) user accounts.

This afternoon I was logged in with AC#1. I then decided to login to AC#2 which requires a 4-digit PIN to unlock. The name of the account appears correctly as to the box to enter the PIN. The PIN is accepted and the normal process continues until the moment for the Desktop and Taskbar items need to be displayed. At this point the screen turns black and nothing further happens which means that the account is unreachable. With Black screen displaying, both the Mouse and the Keyboard are working.

I then tried the normal things like Restart and Shutdown..... but the Black screen persists. If I press C-A-D the normal Menu is displayed and this Menu shows that the current user (AC#2) is currently logged in. If I then login to AC#1 everything works normally in AC#1. If while logged in to AC#1 I check the users, it shows that AC#2 is logged in. If this problem is being caused by a corrupt Profile, I would have thought that W10 would display some kind of message and not just a Black screen. I would also have thought that W10 is smart enough to go to the repository and get a fresh copy.

Any thoughts on the cause of this issue? And any suggestions as to how it can be fixed.

T.
 
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#3 ·
Thanks for your reply.

Once the PIN is accepted and the process appears to continue as normal until the point at which the Desktop should be displayed. At that point the screen goes Black. So there is no visible Desktop, Taskbar or Systray. It is worth noting that this user account has been working without any issues for probably almost 5 years, so my initial suspicion is that something has gone wrong between the process of accepting the PIN and the process of displaying the Desktop.

The problem must be specific to this user account because the other user account works normally without any issues.

T.
 
#5 ·
James, thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately I don't get the Run box.

However, Ctrl-Alt-Del gives me the expected Menu. The Menu shows that AC#2 is logged in because it gives the option to logout or to change the user.

The Menu also gives the Task Manager option and clicking on Task Manager displays TM normally but still with the Black screen behind. I have scrolled down the Processes until Windows Explorer. A Right-click on WE displays the expected sub-Menu. Clicking on Restart does something weird. Instead of restarting, WE disappears and does not reappear.

Have also tried Right-click on Desktop but that displays a sub-Menu that does not include Restart, so cannot restart the Desktop.

As I wrote in my first Post, the PC has 2 local User Accounts and 1 Administrator Account. Both the User Account #1 and the Administrator Account are working normally as expected, it is only User Account #2 that is failing to display the Desktop.

Checking Task Manager in UA#1 and Admin indicate that there are no obvious issues. Everything looks normal.

Initially I thought that the profile of UA#2 might be corrupt, but that does not seem to be the case. The PIN is accepted as normal and what follows looks normal until the point at which the Desktop is displayed - then Black screen

T.
 
#7 ·
OK.... but why would that be? No new software has been installed recently. The only "new" software was the April MS update. If there was a problem with the update it would have affected all three accounts, not just the one and many other users would have been complaining about the April update.

But I am very interested to understand why you suspect that the problem might somehow be connected to the systray. That is not something I would have suspected, so I would like to understand your thinking so that perhaps I can learn something new.

T.
 
#9 ·
Apologies if my description of the sequence was somewhat vague. The Desktop never becomes visible. The sequence is 1. Login screen 2. Enter PIN 3. PIN accepted 4. Login screen continues with normal rotating wheel 5. Login screen closes as normal 6. Instead of Desktop displaying screen goes to Black.

But the Login process has completed. I can check that in several different ways and each way shows that User Account #2 is logged in. And by using Ctrl-Alt-Del I can logout, change user or open Task Manager.

Based on what I am observing it appears as if the process that starts the Desktop is just not executing.

T.
 
#10 ·
You say when you restart explorer in task manager it disappears. Try starting it again from Task Manager.

Ctrl+Shift+Esc should open Task Manager, can also get there with Ctrl+Alt+Del as you did
Click the File menu
Select 'Run New Task'
Type: explorer.exe
Check the box labeled 'Create this task with administrative privileges'
Click OK.

Does that bring up the desktop/taskbar/start menu?
 
#16 ·
1. Thank you DRPC for your suggestion in Post #13. Yes, I do get a cmd window and yes the commands do clear all instances of explorer.exe and do restart explorer.exe but do not kick-start the Desktop.

2. In Post #6 James suggested that it might be caused by a program in the systray. Via Task Manager > Startup, I reviewed all the start apps of which there are not many and none of those could be causing a problem because they are all present in both UA#1 and the Administrator account. Disabling the start apps that I could disable did not kick-start the Desktop.

3. Thank you James for your suggestion in Post #15. You are probably correct in that I should simply create a new account and copy over the user files (except for the ntuser files) from UA#2 to what will be UA#3.

4. I recall from the days of XP that corrupt user profiles were about as common as vanilla ice cream and I also recall that I fixed this issue on many PC's over many years. But that was some time ago and I really cannot recall exactly the steps I took back then to fix the problem.

5. I would still like to solve this issue and when I have the time I will attempt a fix, which if successful I will post back to this Thread.

Thank you both for the time taken to provide your most helpful suggestions. Much appreciated.

T.
 
#17 ·
Update.....

Firstly a short recap..... User Account #1 (UA#1) works as expected. User Account #2 (UA#2) Black-screens immediately after the login procedure has completed.

If I login to UA#2 and wait for the Black screen and then Ctrl-Alt-Del to the Menu and while still logged into UA#2, I change the user to UA#1, enter the PIN for UA#1, the PIN is accepted and the login proceeds until the Desktop at which time UA#1 Black-screens. I then need to do a Restart to get UA#1 to work normally again.

So there is something happening when UA#2 logs in that affects the other logins.

As you may expect I have run SFC; run Anti Virus and Anti Malware; have run a hardware diagnostics and run a check disk...... all tell me that this PC is in very good health.

Hmmmm...... :cry:

T.
 
#18 ·
Hi Tabvla, Please try James's instructions to delete and create a new user account for UA#2 without backing anything up to the account and try renaming the account to something different and creating a new email address for the account if your using Microsoft account for that particular user. If not you can create a local user account and select "I don't have that person's email address and skip those steps to create the account. See if that works.

Something in particular with the account that you mentioned may be corrupted. Sometimes creating an entirely new account with a new email address will help resolve the issue. If UA#2 contains important files or photos' can be sent from another account, stored files within the hard drive or backup cloud solution.

Please let us know if you decide to try this solution and if the solution works and post it here.
 
#20 ·
Tina, thank you for your Post. I agree, setting up a new User Account is the way forward and I have already done that - that is the easy part...:).... However, mysteries in books and movies are fine, mysteries in computers are not. Although I no longer need to fix this problem because I have another account, that does not solve the problem and I would really like to find a solution - because one never knows when it might happen again.

Lunarlander, thank you for the link and suggestion, I will try that the next time I am using that PC.

T.
 
#22 · (Edited)
Tabvla
Hello
How are you - long time since I have worked with you.
Hope you are keeping well

I know you say screen is black as against blank
On the screen appearing please try these
Try after you get to the blank screen
Windows logo key + P
or
Ctrl + Alt + Del.

OR if the screen is black
Windows logo key + Ctrl + Shift + B.

In addition a not so commonly known setting in windows 10 is as on my screenshot
If somehow the user account on which it goes to a blank screen has been configured as ON for USE MY SIGN IN information to finish setting up windows etc -this MAY be the reason

OR if for that user in the same settings on my screenshot it is configured for automatically restart my apps etc then you MAY find that if you were to wait - the desktop would actually appear, but it has been reported that it can take up to 10 minutes
With that setting - restart apps - it is not merely, I believe - apps on the startup tab in task manager
sign in options.jpg
 
#23 ·
Hi Macboatmaster, good to hear from you and thank you for the detailed information. Apologies for the delayed reply I did not receive an alert in my email, so I was not aware of your Post.

I will certainly try your suggestions when next I am on that PC. And I will let you know the outcome.

And yes, thank you I am well and hope you are too..... weird times we are living through at the moment. I was away in Europe for a couple of years, pursuing some of my other interests, that is why I was not active on the Forum.

Take care.

T.
 
#24 ·
Good to hear from you
Will wait to see if my suggestion helps
 
#25 ·
Macboatmaster, once again thank you for the detailed information with respect to possible solutions, that you have suggested.

Something fundamental has gone wrong with this account and for that reason I am going to leave things as they are for the moment.

When I signin to this account it impacts on the other accounts after which they also blank-screen on signin, meaning that I have to do a cold-boot to get things back to normal.

The usual remedies are not detecting anything unusual - AV and Malware scans; Hardware scan; SFC scan; HD scan..... all the usual detective procedures return a result that the machine is in good health.

And of course not knowing what has gone wrong is frustrating but considering that all attempts to login to this account is causing system instability is not really worth the risk of finding the cause.

Thanks again to all who have made suggestions. I will leave this Thread as "Unsolved" for the moment.

T.
 
#26 ·
When I signin to this account it impacts on the other accounts after which they also blank-screen on signin, meaning that I have to do a cold-boot to get things back to normal.
Does that occur if you sign into it on safe mode
If so I would recommend you save the data and delete the account and all settings to it
 
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