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

Just wanted to add my name to the list of people experiencing this. First time for me was just before the new year. PC locked up when trying to run an app as another user (admin account). It got so bad that I had some days where it would lock up 3 times on me. I thought at first the PC was overheating because once it locked up the PC was almost too hot to touch but I believe this is now a symptom of the after affect. It didn't seem to matter what app I was running as admin, Users and Computers, SCCM console, DHCP, or Terminal or just a UAC prompt to install something. Never had the issue on 23H2, only 24H2. I swapped memory, took out the second m2 SSD drive tried the repair stuff, nothing helped. Oddly one thing that slightly helped was removing the case to allow the PC to stay cooler, but it was only temporary as it still locked up just not as often. I did try lowering power settings. I finally replaced the PC with another one thinking I had a bad install. But alas, that one too began to lock up just days into using it. And when I say lockup, everything disappears except the mouse and the blurred or black background. Sometimes if I hit Ctrl-alt-del enough I can get the menu to come up but can't select anything.

PC model is a HP Elite Mini 800 G9

I began to think these are just bad and was worried since this is the model we are deploying everywhere, but then one of the other guys running an older lenovo model started to have it too.

So some of the common factors that others are seeing, it is domain joined. Running anything as admin can induce the lock up. As some others have seen Terminal seems to be an issue, I can't even open it as a regular user and usually if I accident try to open it as a regular user it is bound to lock up shortly if I try to run anything as admin.

To get around the issue I run a vm with my admin account so I don't have to run anything as admin on my PC but anytime I have to install something I brace myself for the lock up. Even had it in the middle of a meeting one time, that was fun. (sarcasm). MS, we aren't your beta testers.

Answer 2

I am also experiencing this issue. I have a company-wide lock screen configured, so the lock screen is already set to static.

I have run the following:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth; & SFC /Scannow
This results in finding nothing wrong with my system.

I have also installed all updates.

It has happened once while logging back in after the screen was locked. Normally this occurs when running a custom script that prompts for admin credentials, but it has happened with multiple UAC prompts. The only thing that I am able to do is reboot. I found that can avoid it if I close out of Chrome and make sure that no Chrome sessions are running.