Forum Discussion
I’m experiencing an issue on ChromeOS where, after signing in, the session occasionally resets or shows a blank screen before the desktop fully loads.
Hi everyone,
I’m experiencing an issue on ChromeOS where, after signing in, the session occasionally resets or shows a blank screen before the desktop fully loads. In some cases, the device appears to authenticate successfully, but the expected environment and apps do not initialize correctly.
This behavior is inconsistent and seems unrelated to network stability. Basic troubleshooting steps such as restarting the device, checking for system updates, and signing out/in again have already been attempted without resolving the issue.
Has anyone encountered similar ChromeOS login or session-loading problems?
Any insights on logs to review or settings that might affect session initialization would be greatly appreciated.
2 Replies
Hi d4_core thanks for getting in touch. You are right to ask fellow customers whether they are experiencing similar issues - however in order to get you up and running as soon as possible in the interim, we would advise that you raise a support case so that our dedicated team can investigate the specific instance and better advise?
If you really want to try and troubleshoot this issue yourselfa bit more; or provide more details to support we include some steps to consider below.
To diagnose why the session is resetting, you could look at the logs generated during the hand-off between the login screen and the user session.
- Accessing Logs: Open Chrome and navigate to file:///var/log.
- Specific Files to Check:
- ui/ui.LATEST: This is the most critical log. It records the initialization of the Chrome UI and the window manager. Look for "Fatal" errors or "GPU process crashed" messages around the time of your blank screen.
- messages: Contains kernel and general system messages. Look for session_manager entries to see if the session is being terminated by the system due to a timeout.
- chrome/chrome: Look for "Profile" or "Cryptohome" errors. If the device authenticates but fails to mount your encrypted user folder, the session will reset.
If the ui.LATEST log shows GPU-related crashes, the session reset is likely a "GPU hang."
- Reset Flags: Go to chrome://flags and click Reset all. Experimental features are a common cause of login-time blank screens.
- Disable Hardware Acceleration: If the UI crashes only when high-resolution elements load, try disabling hardware acceleration temporarily to see if it stabilizes the boot.
- Go to Settings > System and toggle off Use hardware acceleration when available.
Otherwise you can think about applying a Hard Reset and/or Powerwashing your device.
However please do consider raising this directly with support and they also will advise accordingly.
Hi Lynda,
Thank you for the detailed troubleshooting steps — I appreciate the guidance.
For clarification, the issue I’m experiencing is that after login, the session briefly initializes and then resets to a blank screen. This behavior repeats consistently.
I will review the ui.LATEST, messages, and chrome/chrome logs as suggested to check for GPU crashes, session_manager terminations, or Cryptohome errors.
I’ve also reset Chrome flags and confirmed no experimental flags are enabled. Hardware acceleration testing is next.
If the logs indicate a deeper system-level issue, I’ll proceed with raising a formal support case so the team can review the device logs directly.
Thanks again for your assistance.
