Issues with 24H2 and UAC prompts and screen lock?

Question

-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

Answer 1

Hello Andrew J. Clark,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community forum.

Based on the description "I have one other person on our domain who experienced the issue with the UAC prompt locking up Windows 11 Pro", is the OS of the other person on our domain the same as you?

Did you install any KB recently? If so, you can try to uninstall it/them, then check if it helps.

Please check if you have the same issue if you remove your machine from domain to workgroup.

I hope the information above is helpful.

If you have any question or concern, please feel free to let us know.

Best Regards,

Daisy Zhou

Answer 2

Hey Daisy,

Thanks for your reply! I believe this may be an issue caused by TrendMicro antivirus. I unloaded it and ever since then I have not had any problems at all. I'm going to continue monitoring and throw another update on here once I more confident in what the problem is and if I find a solution.

Thanks!

Drew

Answer 3

One thing worth mentioning since this is also something I changed before things seemed to start working again for my lock screen.

Before I updated, my lock screen was a static image. After updating, my lock screen changed to Windows Spotlight. I reverted it back to a static image as well as unloading my antivirus. So I'm not sure yet which one of these things may have resolved the problem. It's possible that the lock screen is an issue with windows spotlight, and the antivirus is causing issues with the UAC prompt. I'll update again when I've determined what is 100% fixing it for me

Answer 4

Hello

Greetings!

Thank you for your time and effort.

I am looking forward to your update and reply again.

Best Regards,
Daisy Zhou

Answer 5

Hey Daisy,

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 mark this as resolved.

Thanks!

Drew