Black screen on resume from standby

[Guest]

Occasionally on resume from standby I am presented with a black screen and a
mouse arrow. The mouse can move the arrow. Caps lock key works. The PC is
pingable. Every few seconds you see the hard disc light flash. However, the
machine will remain in this state forever.

You cannot put the machine back into standby. Cntl-alt-del does nothing. You
cannot access the file system from another PC on the network (or course with
the correct permissions). You cannot use the shutdown command on another
machine to reboot. The event viewer shows nothing of note in any category.
Sometimes there is an entry for something eg. could not renew an IP address
for the Network card, so the event logger is running.

That, the fact the machine is pingable and the mouse moves shows the OS is
in some way running. However, I can find no way to get back from this state
without turning the PC off and back on again. Even then, when the PC reboots
no errors are shown on the screen or in event viewer. It is as though nothing
has happened.

Any ideas would be very very welcome!

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Occasionally on resume from standby I am presented with a black screen and a
mouse arrow. The mouse can move the arrow. Caps lock key works. The PC is
pingable. Every few seconds you see the hard disc light flash. However, the
machine will remain in this state forever.

You cannot put the machine back into standby. Cntl-alt-del does nothing. You
cannot access the file system from another PC on the network (or course with
the correct permissions). You cannot use the shutdown command on another
machine to reboot. The event viewer shows nothing of note in any category.
Sometimes there is an entry for something eg. could not renew an IP address
for the Network card, so the event logger is running.

That, the fact the machine is pingable and the mouse moves shows the OS is
in some way running. However, I can find no way to get back from this state
without turning the PC off and back on again. Even then, when the PC reboots
no errors are shown on the screen or in event viewer. It is as though nothing
has happened.

Any ideas would be very very welcome!

My laptop suffers from the same occasional problem. I don't think
there is anything you can do about it. It's probably caused by a less
than perfect standby or wakeup procedure.

 

[Guest]

Only started happening a week ago though. I suspect it might be a new ATI
video driver. But surely the way it is handled is a bug in Windows. If the
machine is alive enough to be pinged and for the screen and mouse to work
there should be some way of cntl-alt-del'ing (or equivalent) back to a the
login screen, even with a badly behaved video driver. And why is nothing
caught in the event log - nothing. I'd expect to get the "your machine has
recovered from a serious error" message on reboot at least.

 

[Bob I]

If the screen is black are you certain that you didn't go back to the
logon screen?