"This is not a "bluescreen" (BSOD), it's a "blue screen"."
I (which also means people at the company) have a problem that seems to have persisted through the years of Windows 10 Pro x64, but now has annoyed enough people that I've been tasked with fixing it.
So, what happens:
When you enter the regular lock/rest/logon screen (the one that usually reads "Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to log on"), and you press said "Ctrl-Alt-Del" you come to a blank screen, which by Windows default is colored blue. I'm sure someone has another color/photo, but in any case it's the static logon background photo/color. Note, there are no icons in the lower right side that usually show network, power or accessibility status/options. There's also no user icon, password box or user selection icon. As stated, the page is blank.
This only happens after you have locked your computer or the computer has locked itself through policies. That means it's typically seen when someone comes back to their computer. If you wait for 30 seconds without interaction, you return to the previous screen that shows the logged on user who's session is locked.
The only remedy I know of is to hard-restart the computer. This works, but it's also what we want to avoid. We're in a corporate environment, so suddenly having to restart your computer without the option to save your work can in reality amount to thousands of dollars lost, depending on what you were doing/timing/amount of work lost.
You'll ask me: What have you tried? (and other notable aspects of the error)
- We have looked at power management. There are no notable exceptions that have been identified
- Fast startup is not activated
- There's nothing happening when doing the whole bootrec /fixboot /fixmbr /rebuildbcd process
- SFC /SCANNOW is run without errors
- Windows is fully updated (although this error has happened on and off for the last 7 years of my IT-career)
- This happens very rarely, maybe only 1 in 50 locks, but it varies. When you restart, you're not likely to experience the error for several weeks/months
- This has happened to several users, with different rights-schema and policies attached to them
- It's happened at several companies I've worked for, with different domain-setups/controllers
- I've never seen this on a personal computer though, but that's not usually where I lock my PC a lot, so that might be down to reduced risk-exposure
- We have looked at the Event Viewer at a couple of instances, but we can't see that any discrepancies are logged
- Drivers are updated bi-weekly through HPIA, which includes all drivers, UWP and BIOS updates
- We've tried disconnecting the docking (and hence the monitors) and see if the logon screen shows up locally on the laptops, but no dice
- I experienced this the first time maybe two months after receiving a new and newly installed computer, so reinstalling Windows for everyone affected does not seems reasonable
- No keyboard combinations works on this screen. Not Ctrl-Alt-Del, Ctrl-x, Ctrl-Shift-Esc or other variants that have been tried. (Maybe there are some I haven't tried?)
- It's happened on both Dell and HP laptops. Both were on a Domain.
So what I'm I missing? What can we try? Is there maybe a way to enable more detailed logging in the Event Viewer? Or there other logs I can look at?
All new suggestions are greatly appreciated.
