Windows 10 UAC Prompt - Black Screen

Iron Contributor

Hello all - 

 

Not sure if this is the right place for this post, but I figured I would start here.  A few weeks ago we started seeing some strange UAC behavior in our environment.  Our machines are all Windows 10 Pro 1909 / 2004.  95+% of our users are logged onto their machines as standard users, not admin.

 

The problem we are seeing now is when you right click on any app to run as administrator, you are prompted for credentials.  Once you enter credentials, windows just hangs at a black screen.  CTRL+Alt+Del gets you out, but you never successfully elevate privilege.  

 

Anyone else ever experience this behavior - OR - can you point me in a direction to check out?

 

Thanks

Steve

7 Replies

@Stephen Bell 

Check event viewer and see if there was any new installation or change to your PC which might caused this issue?

Are those PCs domain-joined and try login with domain administrator or local administrator? 

You may report this issue through Feedback Hub app and you may also contact Microsoft Support.

 

@Stephen Bell 

 

I'm curious if you ever found a solution for this.  We're experiencing the same problem - black screen after typing in credentials on a UAC prompt.

 

I've noticed on a fresh boot the computer will respond normally for some time, then the black screen issue starts again.

@mimai 

We have not found a solution yet.  Truth be told, haven't been able to spend the necessary time looking into it.  We see it inconsistently.  This week we had a freshly installed PC have the problem.  My current train of thought is that it is something GPO related.  I want to move my PC out of the OU it is currently in and see if that changes anything. 

If you learn anything about this, please keep me posted.

 

Steve

@Stephen Bell 

 

Thanks for the reply.  This first started a couple of weeks ago and has been a huge thorn in my side ever since. 

 

You may be on the right path about it being a GPO issue.  Now that I think about it this has only been affecting users on-site and those who rely heavily on VPN.  Non VPN users haven't said a peep.

 

We have another strange issue with opening PDFs and Office docs from within Outlook.  The first few open fine...but then they either fail to open or randomly pop up 15 minutes later.  Same users affected as the above issue; even started at the same time.  Users with the Outlook problem always experience the black screen issue as well.  Reboot, they're good for a bit.  Rinse/repeat.

 

I'd love to blame in on a bad Windows Update but haven't been able to narrow it down.

 

All users are on Lenovo hardware.  Any similarities by chance?

@mimai -

I believe we have found the root cause of this problem to be a GPO. We took a user that was having problems, moved them into an entirely new OU with 0 GPO scoped. Then 1 by 1 we started adding back in the GPOs. This helped us identify the problematic GPO and we were able to resolve.

Hope this helps
Steve

@Stephen Bell do you recall what the offending group policy was?

@ksanders1345 - It has been a while. I don't recall what it was. I remember identifying by what is stated above. Moved the user to an OU with 0 GPOs scoped. With 0 GPOs scoped it worked. Then we layered GPOs in 1 by 1 and tested.

Wish I had better info for you.