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

Additional behavior to note:

1. Login as limited user
2. Open Edge
3. Open elevated terminal as other user
4. Hibernate
5. Click Edge
6. Address bar receives blue outline, suggesting assistive functionality?
7. Windows Theme colors disappear/reverts to default
8. Taskbar disappears
9. Wait several minutes for eventual blue screen...

Answer 2

Can you be more specific on how you adjusted the lock screen settings? Perhaps we're missing something... Have tried disabling via GPO also, but possible we're still not disabling it the same way you are...

Answer 3

Another noted behavior....turns out the one reliably-responsive functionality that remains when the system goes unresponsive following an attempted hibernation: We can scroll the open webpage on Edge....can't click anything whatsoever, but it seems to respond to scroll input via a touchpad... Fun times?

Answer 4

Hi essex,

I just wanted to chime in and confirm at least some of what you've observed. We moved about a dozen machines onto Win11 24H2 a couple of weeks ago. So far, I am the only one hitting this blasted lock screen problem. I am the only IT admin, more or less, and definitely the only one who regularly launches Terminal with elevation. There are a few other programs I launch with elevation, such as Server Manager, Event Viewer, etc., so this is affecting me pretty severely.

I hope a fix is on the way sooner rather than later. Not locking my screen when I walk away is risky. Giving my regular account local admin is risky. It's a bad situation!

Answer 5

Can you please share the system specifications for the devices impacted? Curious if there's dual gpu, Intel sound, etc..