Issues with 24H2 and UAC prompts and screen lock?

Anonymous
2024-11-05T17:03:14+00:00

-Edit: Adding what I have found to be the fix below my original post content

-Edit 2: It seems that my fix did not work for someone else reporting the same problem. My issues seemed to go away after updating my lock screen settings, but this does not seem to be a guaranteed fix.

Hello,

Shortly after updating to 24H2 on Windows 11 Pro, I've had extremely detrimental issues where the only fix I can find is to force a reboot of my device. I am on a domain joined Dell XPS 15 9500. Hoping someone might have an idea on what I might be able to try to fix these issues

  1. After an hour or two from signing in, I will run into an issue where a UAC dialogue tries to pop up on my screen but never shows up. I am logged in as a standard user and have to elevate with my admin credentials. I tried waited minutes for it, and it never comes up on my screen. The only way I've been able to try and get out of this situation is by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del. And when I do this, my input is all completely frozen. My screen will render with new items such as a new Teams message, but I can not click on anything and there is no input accepted from my keyboard. The only way I seem to be able to get out of this situation is to force a reboot.
  2. After locking my computer and walking away for even a few minutes, I come back to a black screen. I'm able to see my mouse pointer, but that is it. No login screen, no background, nothing. Again the only way to fix this is to reboot my computer.

Things I've tried:

  1. dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
  2. sfc /scannow
  3. Installing all available windows updates and driver updates
  4. I've looked through the event viewer but I have not found anything helpful so far

I have one other person on our domain who experienced the issue with the UAC prompt locking up Windows 11 Pro, which leads me to believe that this may not be a problem with my device. The laptops are of different makes as well.

Screenshot of my sysinfo:

***moved from Windows / Windows 11 / Performance and system failures***

My Answer: From what we can tell from testing, I believe the issue was somehow caused by windows spotlight being selected for the lock screen. I'm not quite sure why. But me and the other person experiencing this both had the issue go away after changing our lock screen to a static image. This looks to have resolved both the UAC freezing issue and the black-screen lock screen issue.

I'm not sure if he also used to have a static image before the update changed it windows spotlight, or if the windows spotlight is running into issues for other reasons. Everything seems normal now though so I'm going to leave my lock screen as a static image and monitor other users to see if they have similar problems

Windows for business | Windows Client for IT Pros | Directory services | User logon and profiles

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-12-03T21:16:09+00:00

    Sure thing, here is a sysinfo screenshot that corresponds with what you posted.

    Here's the sound (which is indeed Intel):

    Finally, graphics.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-12-04T01:16:10+00:00

    Dual gpu. Fancy that.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-01-10T11:20:54+00:00

    Same problem here. The freezes are happening unpredictably and not are not bound to specific programs beeing elevated.

    My system is up-to-date.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-01-16T14:58:09+00:00

    Also experiencing this on 24H2 after opening Windows Terminal - doesn't seem to be related to spotlight for me.

    FYI someone has opened a GitHub issue and I have linked it to this thread for reference

    Dimmed UAC-prompt in Windows freezes it when logged in Windows terminal with user other than the one logged in · Issue #18428 · microsoft/terminal

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-02-03T21:46:06+00:00

    Having the same problem. It's a nasty problem, Windows freezes completely when the UAC prompt would be shown. How can an application completely freezes Windows like that?

    Just saw that the Github issue (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/18428) was closed due to no activity.

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