Windows 2003 Black Login Screen

We had a server at work that whenever you tried to access the console or TS into the server it just displays a black screen. You could do a ctrl-alt-del and if you tabbed just right you could log into the server. The server then functioned correctly. We finally got around to dealing with it the other day. I did the standard Google searches and checked out Microsoft's knowledgebase but had no luck. I finally broke down and called Microsoft. Turns out this is a known issue, but not enough people have called in for it to become a knowledgebase article.

The cause of this issue is because the colors for the Default user are all set to black (0 0 0). This was caused by the system drive running out of space. The disk space issue was caused by a Computer Associates product that went out of control and filled up the drive. To correct the issue I had to export the "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors" key from a working server and import it into the broken server. Once I changed the registry entries the server started displaying the login screen just like you would expect.

You can use RegINI to do this remotely. Save the following setting in a file caled registry.key and use that as an RegINI input parameter to remotely make the changes.

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors
    ActiveBorder = 212 208 200
    ActiveTitle = 10 36 106
    AppWorkSpace = 128 128 128
    Background = 102 111 116
    ButtonAlternateFace = 181 181 181
    ButtonDkShadow = 64 64 64
    ButtonFace = 212 208 200
    ButtonHilight = 255 255 255
    ButtonLight = 212 208 200
    ButtonShadow = 128 128 128
    ButtonText = 0 0 0
    GradientActiveTitle = 166 202 240
    GradientInactiveTitle = 192 192 192
    GrayText = 128 128 128
    Hilight = 10 36 106
    HilightText = 255 255 255
    HotTrackingColor = 0 0 128
    InactiveBorder = 212 208 200
    InactiveTitle = 128 128 128
    InactiveTitleText = 212 208 200
    InfoText = 0 0 0
    InfoWindow = 255 255 225
    Menu = 212 208 200
    MenuText = 0 0 0
    Scrollbar = 212 208 200
    TitleText = 255 255 255
    Window = 255 255 255
    WindowFrame = 0 0 0
    WindowText = 0 0 0

You can download the Windows 2003 Resource Kit from Microsoft. This contains the RegINI application in it.

Then just run regini -m \\<> registry.key to correct the colors on any server you wish.