Blank Blue Screen

Fizman

A client of ours have had a bit of trouble over the last few days, in that they have a blank blue screen on their pc. The machine boots up ok, and they can control and see the mouse cursor, but this blue screen is the only thing currently on display. There is no text whatsoever. The strange thing is I could log in remotely and see this, as well as control the cursor.

Any ideas as to what might be happening or what I can try??

Fysh

What OS is it running?
Is it a laptop or a desktop?
How many screens are attached?
Does the issue persist through reboots?
Does it persist when booting into safe mode?
Have you recently installed updates (either OS or driver-related)?
What do you get when pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete?

First thing I'd want to see in that environment is whether any context-menus are available from right-clicking the cursor, or whether you can get a Run/Task Manager window up? (Windows + R or Ctrl + Alt + Del should get either if the user is logging on succesfully)

Fizman

XP pro.
Desktop.
One screen.
Yes it persists on reboot.
I have not booted into safe mode yet. I may get them to attempt this if I am speaking to them soon.
I'm not sure about OS updates (they are an offsite client), but recently they had been attempting (unsuccessfully) to install Kaspersky. Ended up putting Avast free version on last Thursday. I performed a full scan and all seemed ok. Then this issue popped up on Friday morning.

As of right now I cannot log back in however, even though their status is online.

Task manager could actually be brought up successfully, and CPU performance and the number of processes running all appeared as normal.

One of the girls working there even managed to browse the net for a while over the weekend! (Through initially using ctrl alt del to get into TM).

As far as i'm aware, the right-click menu was not appearing.

Fysh

It sounds like something's interfering with explorer.exe - not being able to get in remotely sounds like something's changed at the firewall level, possibly as a result of installing AV/firewall products.

A few things to check:

• System Restore to see when the last restore points were created and in response to what changes
• Check if any important updates are missing/pending (I'm thinking IE-related updates here, but there have also been a bunch of Flash, Shockwave and Reader issues requiring patching in the last few months)
• What firewalls are active on the system and whether they have auto-detected whatever utility you're using to remotely access the system
• Msconfig to see what's loading on startup and what services are enabled
• Event viewer to see if any warnings or errors relating to explorer.exe are logged, and possibly get the Sysinternals Process Explorer/Process Monitor tools to investigate further

Hope this helps.

macnerdy

Just a thought....
but if kaspersky couldnt install its usually due to remanents of an older antivirus. There could be a conflict between the new anti- and the reg remains of the old.
In the mean time try

In the Windows Registry (open 'regedit')
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\winlogon\

Set 'Shell' variable = 'Explorer.exe'

and see what happens