Vista - Mysterious Black Screen of Death Solution
A few Vista systems have been affected by an issue that's currently being researched. The links at the bottom can help resolve this issue without having to reload Vista from scratch. Hopefully, this will help impacted users until a more permanent solution is available.
Vista - Mysterious Black Screen of Death
http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2008/12/the_mysterious_black_screen_of.php
QUOTE: It goes like this: Your Vista system boots up to a black screen with a mouse cursor. That's it, no rest of the user interface, no nothing to do. This is showing up in sporadic reports since about early November. They call it the blacK Screen Of Death, or KSOD (because BSOD was already taken).
What is causing it? That's unclear for now. But there is a fix, courtesy of Mark from the SBSC & MSP Buzz Blog. He says the problem is related to the RPC service running under the LocalSystem account as opposed to the NT Authority\NetworkService account ...
MVP Susan Bradley shares this post:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2008/12/25/vista-black-screen-of-death-we-still-need-a-reason.aspx
QUOTE: The good news is that Mark has a solid workaround that ensures that you don't have to reinstall Vista after it boots to one of these black screen of death issues. The bad news is the underlying trigger is still not known/understood at this time.
How to fix the Vista KSOD (blacK Screen Of Death)
http://www.logicitc.com/blog/?p=102
SBSC - Windows Vista Black Screen with Mouse Cursor Only Issue:
http://sbsc.techcareteam.com/archives/325