vista black screen hang

[seven]

On my DELL notebook with 4GB RAM after login screen my system hangs with a
black screen, no mouse cursor and keyboard leds (CAPS, SCROLL, NUM) are
bloked, if I press the power button for a few seconds and then I start the
system again the Vista recovery screen apear and if I sellect "Normal
startup" it work fine.

I looked in event log and there is no event loged on the previous startup
(when it hangs)

From what can it be? I've installed all updates including SP1 and I've got
same error. Even if it happents randomly, it still happens. How can I find
why it stucks?

[John Barnes]

If the hang is between the scroll screen and startup screen, you should try
to roll back or update to a different video driver. If this started
happening after you installed some hardware that installed a driver you
should try uninstalling that to see if it is solved.

[seven]

This happened after I enter the password to login, on Wellcome screen.
I roll back video driver and now the system works fine, but without video
drivers witch means I can not use any programs that require more video
performance, not even AERO.

I tried to install other versions of video drivers and I've got the same
error.
Any sollutions to use my system in normal conditions? My video card is
nVidia Quadro NVS 135M.

[John Barnes]

I don't see any driver listed for the card you list on the nVidia site, so I
would contact their support to see what they suggest.

[dima_ben]

I'm experiencing the same problem - Vista hangs at startup - show progressor and then black screen. But I found that it is a bug in Vista boot-loader - there is CheckDisk process running which is not displaying any text. I made this conclusion because I left computer for 10 minites with black screen and then the next check disk (for disk D:) appears on black screen below the middle line of screen.
Also when loading in SafeMode I can see that it stops on crcdisk.sys driver.
Thus, I think - it is bug in Vista boot loader with is not displaying any text while CheckDisk utility is running.

And I'm wondering why this bug still did not fixed?!

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

It's not a bug in the bootloader, if it were it would be happening to
millions. It's not. The vast majority of hangs during the early boot process
can be attributed to a hardware issue. Faulty ram, power supply, or failing
hard drive are the most common causes. The diskchecker process would only
run once unless reinitiated for subsequent boots.

When booting to safe mode, the screen will show the last loaded driver until
the next stage begins. The file you see, crcdisk.sys, is commonly one of the
last ones.

I would start with a software memory diagnostic, and follow that with one
for the hard drive - best done with tools available from the drive
manufacturer. If the system passes both these, you may need to see a
technician.

[dima_ben]

That is exactly the case - this IS THE BUG(!) in Vista booloader because it happens to millions of users, you can easily find it by searching different forums - the same problem with vista black screen on booting happens too many times!
Most of advicers (like you) suggest to "test and change hardware", "reinstall drivers", etc, but in reality only 3-5% are real problems with hardware (I think) and the rest of 95-97% - is THE mentioned BUG in Vista bootloader!

Most of users too impatient to wait (or report it to microsoft), so they are pressing [reset], claiming to support, etc. But if we start to pressing [spacebar] key each 3 seconds just right after the black screen appears we can see that Vista loaded as usual. Because ChkDsk utility suggest to skip check disk operation by pressing any key - so by pressing spacebar key we can skip all disk checks at startup and make Vista loaded without "black screen delay".

Also - if left computer with black screen for 10-20 minutes we can see that Vista passed all ChkDsk operations and loaded as usual.

Thus, as you are MVP, please register this bug (I hope you should know "secret" page where users can register bugs for Vista)!

Bug consists of 2 things: 1st - first ChkDsk call does not displayed on a screen, looks like problems with wrong screen position initialization, 2nd - it is completely unclear why Vista decided to check all my disks every morning(?!).

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Open an elevated command prompt, run "chkntfs /d" to clear the dirty bit
that is causing the disk checks. If this does not work, then either a) you
have a drive that is likely faulty, or b) a drive tool/utility of some sort
is or was used on the system that is causing an issue (use of non-compliant
drive tools has been shown to do this).

While I didn't mention third party drivers as a possible problem, issues
with them represent probably 90% of all system crashes. I don't think, from
the sounds of it, that this is your issue. If it were, there would be a blue
screen and crash dump we could analyze, nothing you've stated thus far
indicates that.

What you commonly see on forums is the result of the majority of them
slurping posts to and from the same source, the Microsoft newsservers (which
is where I am as opposed the vbulletin web forum you are engaged with). One
person posts an issue and it shows up on hundreds of different web forums
due to this behavior, making it appear that many more have the same problem
when that is not at all the case. Another annoying habit of these forums is
that users don't quote what they are responding to, something that makes it
difficult for those trying to help as we need to review what's already been
done. On average most helpers are engaged in dozens of simultaneous
sessions.

[dima_ben]

Ok...
I just completed MemTest and HDD diagnostic - no errors found.

I'm using same computer (without essential hardware changes for about 3 years). Intel Pentium D940 3.2GHz/4Gb RAM/200Gb+500Gb HDD/nVidia 8600GT 512Mb. It was working perfect all this time.

Few month ago I have migrated to Windows Vista (from XP, which left on second HDD). Then... not sure what happened... maybe it because Kaspersky Antivirus 2009 (it was recommended by Vista as protection tool when I installed it)... Because after I bought and installed KAV problems began. Last week I got check disk every morning, yesterday evening 400Mb file copying (from 1 HDD to another) took about 40 min(!). :-\ Today morning it starts to find NTFS errors and so on - lot of problems, etc... looks completely crazy.

Finally I disabled auto start of Kaspersky antivirus and now seems it starts to be a bit better - 400Mb file copying takes 20 sec only, no crazy errors and regular hangs... dunno if it was because of antivirus or by other reasons.
I'm sure I have no viruses (I checked it by DrWeb LiveCD also by Symantec AV and KAV also did not found any treats).

So, reasons of strange failures still unclear. Suspect KAV antivirus but still not sure... maybe HDD cables... I unpluged it and then plugged back again.

Maybe computer decided to take a rest.... :)

[Rick Rogers]

As you've isolated the cause, I would suggest that you bring this to the
attention of Kaspersky support:
http://usa.kaspersky.com/support/