Over the past few months we have seen a few Windows servers with a black screen.
Meaning

  • You can’t see the logon promt
  • You get a black screen when you connect with RDP

We found that the problem was caused by a change in the Windows color scheme.

The solution is to copy the color scheme from a simular Windows servers registry and add it the VM/server that has the problem using registry to connect to a remote server.

  1. On a simular windows server locate “[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors]” and export it to a file.
  2. Using the same Registry Editor connect to the remote server.
  3. Import the registry file just created or change the color scheme manually.
  4. Reboote the affected server to change the color scheme.

Default color scheme for a Windows 2003 server.
Default color scheme for a Windows XP.
Default color scheme for a Windows 2000 server.
Default color scheme for a Windows 2008 server.