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November 9, 2014

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Windows Vista KSoD (blacK Screen of Death)


Was given a Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop running Windows Vista to fix. It would boot up but there was no desktop, just a black screen with a working mouse pointer. This appears to be a common problem and there are a number of solutions posted on the web. I tried a few lots of them.

Here are the fixes I tried (spoiler: solution 7 worked):

 

Solution 1

 http://www.nuonsoft.com/blog/2009/05/02/possible-ksod-black-screen-of-death-solution-for-windows-vista/comment-page-2/

  1. Press F8 and start up computer to enable recovery menu
  2. Select Repair your computer
  3. In the System Recovery Options dialog box accept the default keyboard layout (US).
  4. Select user name from drop down box on next screen and enter password
  5. Choose Command Prompt from the list
  6. Type in c:
  7. Then type in Regedit
  8. Clicked “File>Import”
  9. Clicked to show “all files” at the bottom
  10. Navigated to C:\Windows\System32\Winevt\Logs
  11. Deleted all event logs one by one.
    • Alternative solution is to rename the Logs folder to Logs_OLD (ren Logs Logs_OLD) and recreate an empty Logs folder (mkdir Logs).
  12. Closed all windows and rebooted.

Didn’t work.
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 Solution 2

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/193b7008-ce4b-4d03-acc3-b8d7ffe610d5/vista-black-screen-white-mouse-pointer 

  1. Press F8 and start up computer to enable recovery menu
  2. Select Repair your computer
  3. In the System Recovery Options dialog box accept the default keyboard layout (US).
  4. Select user name from drop down box on next screen and enter password
  5. Choose Command Prompt from the list
  6. At C:>  type  regedit   [Press ENTER]
  7. The registry editor will open.
  8. In the Registry select  ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’ and then go to File/Load Hive.
  9. In the ‘Load Hive’ dialog box, navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\Config  folder.
  10. In the Config folder, select  SOFTWARE  and click Open.
  11. In the Name Hive dialog box, type a unique name, such as EDIT1 and click OK.
  12. You should now see the EDIT1 branch, expand this branch and navigate to \Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon.
  13. In the right side of the Winlogon Key you will see a Value called  ‘Shell’, double click this value.
  14. In the Value Data box, it should show  ‘Explorer.exe’  and nothing else. If it shows something different, change the Value Data to Explorer.exe.
  15. Click OK.
  16. Scroll back up and select the EDIT1 branch.
  17. Go to File and select Unload Hive.
  18. Exit the registry editor and the command prompt.
  19. Press the ‘Restart’ button to reboot.

Didn’t work. Value was already set as Explorer.exe.
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Solution 3

http://www.nuonsoft.com/blog/2009/05/02/possible-ksod-black-screen-of-death-solution-for-windows-vista/comment-page-2/

  1. Press F8 and start up computer to enable recovery menu
  2. Select Repair your computer
  3. In the System Recovery Options dialog box accept the default keyboard layout (US).
  4. Select user name from drop down box on next screen and enter password
  5. Choose Command Prompt from the list
  6. Navigate to C:\windows\system32\config\
  7. There should be two registry files: “software” and “software_previous”
  8. Rename “software” file to “software_corrupt” and “software_previous” to “software”
  9. Exit the command prompt.
  10. Reboot

Didn’t work.
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Solution 4

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-hardware/getting-that-black-screen-of-death-upon-logging/e0312a9a-e84d-452f-9244-5e3ba1a4b8af 

  1. Press F8 and start up computer to enable recovery menu
  2. Select Repair your computer
  3. In the System Recovery Options dialog box accept the default keyboard layout (US).
  4. Select user name from drop down box on next screen and enter password
  5. Choose Command Prompt from the list
  6. At C:>  type  regedit   [Press ENTER]
  7. The registry editor will open.
  8. In the Registry select  ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’ and then go to File/Load Hive.
  9. In the ‘Load Hive’ dialog box, navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\Config  folder.
  10. Select “SYSTEM”
  11. Select Open.
  12. In the Load Hive dialog box, type in “MySYSTEM” box for the registry hive that you want to edit.
  13. After the hive is loaded, modify the following key value per the instructions below: You will need to know what ControlSet the machine is currently running on, this can be determined by going to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\MySYSTEM\Select and find the “Current” value in the Right hand side. (Example: Current value is 1 then the ControlSet will be ControlSet001)
  14. Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet00X\Services\RpcSs (X is the Number from the Current Key from above)
  15. Value Name: ObjectName
  16. Old Value: LocalSystem
  17. New Value: NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService
  18. Unload the SYSTEM hive by selecting the key “MySYSTEM” and then select File -> Unload Hive… menu item.
  19. Exit regedit.exe
  20. Reboot the system normally

Didn’t work. Value was already set as NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService.
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 Solution 5

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/make-user-account-control-uac-stop-blacking-out-the-screen-in-windows-vista/

  1. Press F8 and start up computer to enable recovery menu
  2. Select Repair your computer
  3. In the System Recovery Options dialog box accept the default keyboard layout (US).
  4. Select user name from drop down box on next screen and enter password
  5. Choose Command Prompt from the list
  6. At C:>  type  regedit   [Press ENTER]
  7. The registry editor will open.
  8. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
  9. Right-click in the right-hand pane and create a new 32-bit DWORD value called PromptOnSecureDesktop, setting the value to 0.
  10. Exit regedit.exe
  11. Reboot the system normally

Didn’t work.
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Solution 6

  1. Created Windows 7 USB boot disk using X17-59183.iso that I saw mentioned on Reddit.
  2. Booted faulty laptop from USB drive
  3. Accept default language
  4. Click Repair your computer in bottom left of Install Windows screen (do not click Install now)
  5. Select system hard drive on next screen and click Next
  6. Select Command Prompt from the list
  7. Run chkdsk c: /f /r (takes a long time)
  8. Run sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows
  9. Reboot

Didn’t work.
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Solution 7

Created a Windows Vista installation USB drive by following the instructions here:

http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/296167-vista-iso-download.html 

Then re-installed Windows Vista as detailed here:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/how-to-reinstall-windows-without-losing-data.htm

Hooray!
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