I had a problem the other day when I went to logon to a server using RDP and the text fields where you enter your username and password were black! I typed in my credentials anyway and found that I could still logon to the server. After this there seemed to be no other issues.
Here is what I was presented with when I tried to logon:
Around the time it happened I remember the OS volume running extremely low on space and figured it may be a corrupt user profile. So I renamed the profile and then tried to logon to the server again using Remote Desktop. I was again presented with the same logon screen with black text fields. After a quick search on the Microsoft knowledge base I came across an article that seemed to offer a workaround:
I had a quick check of the HKEY_USERS\.Default\Control Panel\Colors registry key and surely enough lots of the colours were set to "0 0 0":
[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"="0 0 0"
"InactiveTitle"="0 0 0"
"InactiveTitleText"="0 0 0"
"InfoText"="0 0 0"
"InfoWindow"="0 0 0"
"Menu"="0 0 0"
"MenuText"="0 0 0"
"Scrollbar"="0 0 0"
"TitleText"="0 0 0"
"Window"="0 0 0"
"WindowFrame"="0 0 0"
"WindowText"="0 0 0"
"MenuHilight"="0 0 0"
"MenuBar"="0 0 0"
I exported the same registry key from another server (that wasn't affected) and imported it into the registry of the server that was displaying the black logon screen. After logging off and back onto the server (no reboot necessary) the colours had returned to what they were previously:
The registry key values I exported came from a Server running Server 2003 Enterprise Edition but I have compared them to those of Server 2003 Standard Edition and they are the same. You can download the correct registry values from here:
