Server has black logon screen

We just had a power cut and when everything came back to life our exchange server (proliant) booted to a black screen, oddly enough it still seemed to work, if you know the order of the buttons you can still login....

weird,


after much hunting it seems that the system default colours in the registry have the odd bug that if the machines system drive runs out of space they may reset themselves to 0 0 0...

ALthough not the same cause,, definately the same problem, to fix this I did (and dont advise, so if you do and it doesn't work or the server becomes an expensive paper weight, there are no guaruntees, no liabilty etc);

1- using regedit on a pc on the same network, goto file -> connect to network registry
Type in the name of the server with the problem.

NOTE this is a live server do not adjust any settings you are not sure about (ie all of them) any false moves and your machine could be toast.

2- Got to the "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors" entries, you will see they are all set to 0 0 0.
You can set these three numbers to any RGB (if you dont know what this is I would stop now) you like, the system defaults are below, change each color setting to the one listed

**********************
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Colors]
"ActiveBorder"="212 208 200"
"ActiveTitle"="10 36 106"
"AppWorkSpace"="128 128 128"
"Background"="102 111 116"
"ButtonAlternateFace"="181 181 181"
"ButtonDkShadow"="64 64 64"
"ButtonFace"="212 208 200"
"ButtonHilight"="255 255 255"
"ButtonLight"="212 208 200"
"ButtonShadow"="128 128 128"
"ButtonText"="0 0 0"
"GradientActiveTitle"="166 202 240"
"GradientInactiveTitle"="192 192 192"
"GrayText"="128 128 128"
"Hilight"="10 36 106"
"HilightText"="255 255 255"
"HotTrackingColor"="0 0 128"
"InactiveBorder"="212 208 200"
"InactiveTitle"="128 128 128"
"InactiveTitleText"="212 208 200"
"InfoText"="0 0 0"
"InfoWindow"="255 255 225"
"Menu"="212 208 200"
"MenuText"="0 0 0"
"Scrollbar"="212 208 200"
"TitleText"="255 255 255"
"Window"="255 255 255"
"WindowFrame"="0 0 0"
"WindowText"="0 0 0"
**********************


Now I can see my login screen!

see link for more info: http://www.flyhpr.com/blog/2005/02/windows-2003-black-login-screen.htm