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If drives are freeze locked, Blancco Drive Eraser / Blancco 5 will attempt to remove the locks by power cycling the machine: the screen turns black for few seconds before returning. Depending on boot option used to boot Blancco Drive Eraser / Blancco 5 (see the Booting Options) or the configured erasure process ("Manual", "Semi-automatic" or "Automatic", see the Processes from the user manual), the Freeze lock removal may occur before the GUI starts or right before an erasure process starts. Unfortunately in some hardware some hardware configurations the screen might not turn back on ("black screen"), meaning that the freeze lock removal procedure is not properly supported by the machine.

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1. The screen stays black and an erasure process starts in the background: the drive’s light starts
   blinking as the drive is being actively erased. In this situation only the screen is missing, if the user wants to monitor the erasure a workaround consists in monitoring it via the BMC 4Blancco Management Console. After the erasure, the report can also be fetched. Please refer to the Drive Eraser Configuration Tool and the Blancco Management Console user manuals for more information about this feature.
2. The screen stays black and nothing starts in the background, however the machine is on
   (lights are on, fans are working). In this situation the screen is missing but the drives are most likely detected and ready for erasure, if the user wants to start and monitor the erasure a workaround consists in controlling it via the BMC 4Blancco Management Console. After the erasure, the report can also be fetched. Please refer to the DECT and BMC Drive Eraser Configuration Tool and the Blancco Management Console user manuals for more information about this feature.
3. The screen stays black and the machine is unresponsive (lights are off, fans are not working). In this situation, the Freeze lock removal is most likely paused or has failed. There are three ways to proceed:
   • With some old machines, the Freeze lock removal process may be paused because the machine has not got enough time to restart. Try to press any keyboard key (e.g. Enter) or push the machine’s power button for 1 1 second or so to wake up the machine and restart the Blancco GUI software's user interface / begin the erasure
     (after this, you may end up with a working screen or in the case I 1 or II2).
   • On other machines, power cycling is a functionality that needs to be turned on. Check from the BIOS/UEFI settings that the machine can be suspended and restarted, the setting may correspond to:
     • Enabling the "Suspend-to-RAM" or "S3 mode" functionality.
     • Moving the "ACPI Standby State" to "S3".
     • Unblocking the "Sleep" or "S3 State" functionality.
       
   • If the previous does not work, the Freeze lock removal process has likely failed. Next, try to to remove the drive from the machine and connect it to a motherboard that doesn’t enforce
     any Freeze lock (as the Freeze lock itself is an entirely BIOS dependent feature) or that can be suspended and restarted properly.
   • Otherwise, unplug either the signal or power cable of the drive. This requires that the
     following steps are performed:
     • Shut down the computer system.
     • Unplug the signal cable or four-wire power cable of the drive while leaving the signal cable plugged in. To eliminate the danger of Electro Static Discharge, always ground yourself when removing the power cord. The signal cable is the preferred option and should be attempted first. If the freeze lock remains after attempting the boot with signal cable removed, attempt the boot with the power cord removed. This method is not recommended by Blancco, as the drive may result damaged in the process.
     • Power on the system and boot the Blancco software.
     • When the software is loading i.e. you see the progress bar, plug the signal/power cord of the drive back in.

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