I'm trying to set up a SharePoint development/test machine using Server 2008 x64 as the OS. Everything worked fine until about 3 weeks ago when the computer rebooted up to a black screen with a mouse cursor but otherwise completely unresponsive. Booting to safe mode does not work either. I suspect an update is incompatible with the system/hardware but I cannot find it. I rebuilt from scratch, performing backups at each step and suceeded in getting nearly everything installed before it happened again. Even when I do a complete system restore, it will have the same problem within 1 or two restarts. Here is the setup:Dell Optiplex 745 Core2Duo 2Ghz w/4GB ram 2 80GB HDDServer 2008 Standard x64Application server RoleDesktop experience featureJoined to a domainVisual Studio 2008 with SP1 appliedOffice 2007 Ultimate with SP1 appliedSQL Server 2008 Developer editionAdobe Acrobat/Flash**************The proble appears with just the above installed, however, I originally also installed:MOSS 2007SharePoint Designer 2007Has anyone experienced a similar problem or have any further troubleshooting tips?

Hi, I found a article describe the similar issue to yours, please check if you encountered the same problem: Vista or Server2008 stuck at a black screen and the desktop never renders. http://blogs.technet.com/ben_parker/archive/2008/07/03/vista-or-server2008-stuck-at-a-black-screen-and-the-desktop-never-renders.aspx If the problem continues, please perform the following steps: 1. Confirm that we are able to open Task Manager either by hitting the key "CTRL + ALT + DEL" in any of the following modes. 1. Normal Mode 2. Safe Mode 3. Safe Mode With Networking 4. Active Directory Restore Mode. 2. If we are able to bring up the Task Manager check whether we correct registry entries: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon "Shell"="Explorer.exe" (REG_SZ) "Userinit"="C:\WINDOWS\system32\userinit.exe," (REG_SZ) (For Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008) Please also check the if we have correct permission for this registry key, make sure that we at least have Administrators and System Group with full control, Power Users and Users group with read permission and Creator Owner with special Permissions. 3. Then confirm if we are able to launch explorer.exe from the Run window in Task Manager. While launching the explorer.exe confirm that we dont receive any errors like access denied, if yes then check if we have appropriate permissions for this file as well as the system root partition. (Make sure that we have at least Administrators, System and Power Users group in the security list) NOTE: Click on the Browse button in the RUN windows and then right click and select the properties of the file or the drive for which you wish to check the permission. If we see a flash when you launch explorer.exe and Iexplorer.exe it means that the application is either not functioning properly or it is crashing. We can try looking at the Event Logs remotely and check if there are any Application errors in the Application Event Logs like Event ID 1000 and Event ID 26. If you find in the event logs that Explorer is Faulting on a DLL mentioned in the Error message please try to update it. but before that please try running MSConfig and disabling third party services and Startup items. Reboot the machine to look for any changes. Else we would have to collect the DUMP if created by Dr. Watson Debugger by default else set the machine for capturing Explorer.exe dump. Best regards, Vincent Hu

I found the same article and it is not the problem. It refers to an issue that occurs after you log on. My server isn't even getting that far. In every start up (normal, safe, safe w/ net) it does not get past the first stages of boot up. In Safe Mode it will list the drivers and immediately following crcdisk.sys it goes to a black screen with a mouse cursor and is unrepsonsive in any way. No ping, no keyboard (ctrl-alt-del), nothing. Just the mouse cursor. I do not even get to the point of the green "loading" bar. I suspect an issue with an update. This problem has now also occurred on a production server we were rebuilding to support SQL 2008. I have used a different image to do the install and this has occurred on both my Dell dev box and the production server (IBM x3650). Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot a brain dead box?

you can hook the hardisk to another server and perform checkdisk and try whether it resolves the issue.sainath Windows Driver Development

Hi, According to your description, please perform the following suggestions to check whether the issue persists. 1. If you had installed some hardware or driver recently, please detach them and uninstall the driver to test. 2. Please perform detailed hardware check, detach all accessory devices, including SAN and iSCSI disk to test. 3. As Sainath said, please boot into WinRE and run chkdsk /r to check disk to test. 4. If the issue persists, please boot using the Windows 2008 media and run the following command from the command prompt sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=C:\windows and then again reboot in the normal mode. If the issue continues, I recommend that you contact Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS) via telephone so that a dedicated Support Professional can assist with your request. To obtain the phone numbers for specific technology request please take a look at the web site listed below: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;OfferProPhone#faq607 Hope the issue will be resolved soon. Best regards, Vincent Hu

I have found a fix (and thankfully didn't have to burn one of my support incidents). After doing another search around the net, I found that this problem has been dubbed the KSOD or blacK Screen Of Death. The cause is the RPC service running as LocalSystem instead of NetworkService (which is the default). This appears to be a known issue with Vista and 2008. (See this articlehttp://www.logicitc.com/blog/?p=102)In our environment we are running mostly Windows XP Machines and wanted to use Remote Assistance in conjunction with System Center Configuration Manager. But we determined that this will only work if we change the default RPC account from NetworkService to LocalSystem. We were using a packaged script deployed by SCCM to all computers that have IP addresses issued by our DHCP server. (Thankfully it did not affect the production servers which have a different addressing scheme). So during the process of building these two servers, within a few days after joining the Domain, the SCCM group membership wouldd update and the "fix" would be applied to these boxes because of their addresses. Then when the next restart occurred - KSOD!Thanks for you input, I must admit I never got much use out of the old Recovery Console, but WinRE is far more useful.Regards,Patrick Meehan