Windows 8 hangs on black screen after resume from hybrid sleep

Consider the following scenario:

• You have a Windows 8 system.
• The system has been configured to use hybrid sleep.
• Power to the Windows 8 system is lost while the system is asleep.

After you resume the Windows 8 system from hybrid sleep, the system hangs with a black screen at boot.

Some writes in progress at the time the system enters hybrid sleep are not properly flushed to disk before the system hibernates, and as a result data corruption in the file system and/or pagefile occurs if power to the system is lost while the system is in hybrid sleep. Depending on what writes were in progress at the time sleep was entered, random data corruption may occur across the disk.

This behavior is a regression in Windows 8 and does not occur in hybrid sleep scenarios on Windows 7.

The hang at boot on the black screen symptom occurs if the $Secure file becomes corrupt. The $Secure file is an NTFS internal metadata file containing security permissions for the entire volume. The $Secure file is likely to become corrupt if one of the lost writes described above was related to writing permissions. When the operating system attempts to recover the corrupted $Secure file, the result is that default permissions are set across all files on the system. The default permissions are not sufficient to allow the RPC endpoint mapper service to start, which prevents the RPC service from starting. The RPC service is critical to the operation of Windows, and RPC service start failure results in the apparent system hang.

Three separate updates for Windows 8 have been released in two separate Windows Update packages to prevent this issue on Windows 8. They where made available on Windows Update as part of the June and July cumulative update releases.

The mitigation fixes�released as part of the June 2013 cumulative update addresses two issues:�

1) An issue where the Task Scheduler repeatedly sets permissions on files in a way that causes the $Secure file to grow excessively.�

2) CHKDSK has been updated to�more gracefully recover the $Secure file in the event that�$Secure becomes corrupt on disk.

The third fix was released as part of the July 2013 cumulative update. It resolves the root cause of this issue:

3) An issue where some writes may be lost if power is lost during hybrid sleep. This fix will prevent the lost writes, which will prevent the data corruption leading to this scenario.

The June 2013 Windows 8 cumulative update can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2845533
The July 2013 Windows 8 cumulative update can be found here:�http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2855336

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