Have you ever had a login screen show up in Windows where everything is black except for the logo like the image below? This happens sometimes when the system drive on a server fills up, and a bug in windows causing all of the color settings to default to black. It is a pretty common problem, however for some reason Microsoft has not released a KB article about this even though I have seen this happen numerous times.

Black Login Screen With Logo in Windows 2003

If you ever see this happen on one of your machines, the solution is actually pretty simple. The first thing you will need to do is clear up the disk space on the server. The easiest way is to do this remotely from another server. If you do not have that option, try and type the username in the blank screen, you should see the text cursor move across as if it is recognizing the letters you are typing, which it is. If you don’t see the cursor moving, it may just be waiting for you to press Ctrl-Alt-Del, so press that and try again. Once the username is entered, press tab and enter the password. Then hit enter and you should be able to login without an issue. Once you are logged in you will see that all of the color is back on the screen and you can use the machine like normal and you can now clear up the disk space issue.

Now that the disk space has been cleared up, you will want to make a few changes to the registry. You will want to take a backup of the registry before you make any changes though. For more information on backing up the registry check out the following link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756 for Windows XP/Vista… the steps are pretty much the same for Windows 2003. Keep in mind that the next step of editing the registry can be dangerous if things are done improperly and you must do so at your own risk. To quote Microsoft, with one change to refer to this site:

Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. TinyInt.Com cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.

Ok now that that is out of the way, and you have backed up your registry, you can try the following. You can manually edit the registry, specifically the string values located in the key [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors] to match the following block of text. You can also simply start up notepad, copy the text below into a blank document, then save the file to your desktop as something like colors.reg (make sure to change the “Files of Type” to “All Files” so it doesn’t save as a text file) then simply double click on that file on your desktop and click yes to allow it to be imported into your registry. Then you can log off and you should see that the colors have been updated!

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[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"