On Sunday, Jan 20, 2013, I installed a number of updates for my office’s Windows Server 2008 SP2 machine, and after the reboot, the system had some major difficulties starting up again. I couldn’t get in normally or with Last Known Good configuration, and even trying to go in via Safe Mode would simply cause the machine to hang. After using the installation CD to boot up & performing a really long chkdsk, the system found a bunch of errors but finally came online again. Unfortunately, however, it now has the blacK Screen of Death.
I’ve been looking at tons of threads on Google dealing with KSOD and none of them seem to be very useful; most have to do with systems that are totally unresponsive. From what I can tell, even though I’ve got a black screen w/ nothing more than a cursor, the OS has booted up & all workstations can access the server fine. That is, Active Directory is ok, the file server is accessible, printer server is fine, etc. I simply can’t login or do anything when sitting in front of the server itself. The screen says the usual “press CTRL-ALT-DEL to logon”, but doing so simply gives a spinning hourglass symbol for a couple of seconds, and then it goes to that blank black screen w/ cursor. Pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL again gives me the original blue screen (with “Windows Server 2008 Standard” written at the bottom) & a spinning hourglass for a couple of seconds, and then black screen again (i.e., it doesn’t ever give me the option to choose Task Manager, or shut down, or logon, or anything else).
I’m guessing something maybe got screwed up w/ the video card drivers, but not 100% sure. And unsure what to try, since I can’t safely shut down the server as I can’t get to any prompts.
It’s Monday, Jan 21, 2013 now & I did attempt one hard shutdown after everyone was off work (i.e. killed the power, waited 15 sec, then rebooted from disc) to attempt some RegEdit suggestions I’d found dealing w/ KSOD (http://thebackroomtech.com/2008/12/30/fix-for-windows-vista-black-screen-of-death-aka-ksod/), but that did not resolve it; and I’m weary of performing too many hard shutdowns as rebooting this server takes forever on the machine.
Anyway, I’m open to suggestions as to what to try next… Has anyone ever had this sort of issue & successfully resolved it?
Thanks in advance.