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This is really frustrating. It's happened twice now, in the past 24 hours. I'm just doing my work, and suddenly the screen goes black for 2 seconds, flashing black, then goes to the 'metro' screen saver screen, where you start when you first boot the computer on. so it appears that it is logging off. I log back on, and a FEW of my open programs (skype, dropbox, few others) are still there, but most of my programs (wordpad, browser) simply terminated and I have to start them again, restore chrome session, lose work that I didn't save in WordPad, ETC.
Windows 8 Pro here.
Please help, it would be good to get to the bottom of this. 99% sure it's no virus, I'm careful and an experienced computer user and have MSE monitoring things so it can't be a virus.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Well I just tried to kill winlogon.exe and I have the exact same behavior. That would mean a sudden crash from Winlogon would cause the same ...
Maybe it's not intentional, but is there a bug inside Winlogon causing a crash of the process and this behavior. Please Microsoft look into this!
My Windows 8 randomly kicks me to the password enter screen. All my programs stay up and I just have to type my password and hit enter to get back in. I am also not doing anything strenuous on the machine. The machine is overclocked though but seems stable
A similar thing to the chrome 'freak out and restart' thing just happened to me in WORD (word 2013). what is WRONG with this windows 8!!!
Instead of letting me WAIT for the hang, it just promptly decides it's going to CLOSE oof all my 12 word files open and make me painstakingly re-open them all again in the recovery window!
GARRR!.....
My Windows 8 randomly kicks me to the password enter screen. All my programs stay up and I just have to type my password and hit enter to get back in. I am also not doing anything strenuous on the machine. The machine is overclocked though but seems stable - no blue screens.
Sounds like an entirely different problem to me ...
Here are the details regarding this issue on my PC purchased on: 12/16/2012. I began experiencing this problem on: 01/08/2013 after downloading and installing the 13 Microsoft updates listed below. In my case, the events written to the log files indicate that the problem is security related. I have ruled out my power options setting completely, after changing the parameter “Require a password on wakeup” to No; this change worked as expected. However, when I am logged off by the computer, which is about every 30 seconds, a password is required.
I amazed that there has been no activity by Microsoft on this forum post since October 31, 2012. Is there really anyone from Microsoft reading this stuff or are we the “Community” of users supposed to figure this problem out for ourselves? And fix it too?
The following are four of the events written to “Windows Logs Security”
An account was logged off.
Logon Type: 7
This event is generated when a logon session is destroyed. It may be positively correlated with a logon event using the Logon ID value. Logon IDs are only unique between reboots on the same computer.
Logon Name: Security
Source: Microsoft Windows Security Logged: 1/30/2013 5:00:06 AM
Event ID: 4634 Task Category: Logoff
Level: Information Keywords: Audit Success
User: N/A Computer: Name
Opcode: Info
Special privileges assigned to new logon.
Logon Type: 7
Impersonation Level: Impersonation
This event is generated when a logon session is created. It is generated on the computer that was accessed.
The subject fields indicate the account on the local system which requested the logon. This is most commonly a service such as the Server service, or a local process such as Winlogon.exe or Services.exe.
The logon type field indicates the kind of logon that occurred. The most common types are 2 (interactive) and 3 (network).
The New Logon fields indicate the account for whom the new logon was created, i.e. the account that was logged on.
The network fields indicate where a remote logon request originated. Workstation name is not always available and may be left blank in some cases.
The impersonation level field indicates the extent to which a process in the logon session can impersonate.
The authentication information fields provide detailed information about this specific logon request.
Logon Name: Security
Source: Microsoft Windows Security Logged: 1/30/2013 5:00:06 AM
Event ID: 4624 Task Category: Logon
Level: Information Keywords: Audit Success
User: N/A Computer: Name
Opcode: Info
A logon was attempted using explicit credentials.
This event is generated when a process attempts to log on an account by explicitly specifying that account’s credentials. This most commonly occurs in batch-type configurations such as scheduled tasks, or when using the RUNAS command.
Logon Name: Security
Source: Microsoft Windows Security Logged: 1/30/2013 5:00:06 AM
Event ID: 4648 Task Category: Logon
Level: Information Keywords: Audit Success
User: N/A Computer: Name
Opcode: Info
Updates installed on 01/08/2013
