Black Screen...of death

Eurorunner

Running xp pro sp1 on an AMD xp2400 machine. I had a dodgy vga cable - causing problems cos it was so damn short. Anyways, the screen went black the other day and i assumed it must be the cable. Replaced it with a new 2m vga cable - but still black screen.

I tried a reinstall, but that doesnt seem to have made any difference.
Now im getting the boot-up info displayed, then the xp pro splash screen. Thereafter, my monitor goes black with an 'out of range' message displayed briefly.


Someone suggested that the graphics card might be bust but surely there would be nothing displayed at all if this was the case?

Any ideas anyone.

hulhi

boot in the "safe mode" (press F8 when booting) or "VGA mode" then change the resolution and monitor refresh rate.

Eurorunner

Pressing F8 pulls up a 'first boot' option list ie. cdrom/ide drive/floppy. Not sure how i can get into safe mode with this machine although i dont think it will make any differerence.
I ended up in safe mode at one stage - during my attempted reinstall of xp - and it just led to the black screen again..

Any other ideas...thanks and keep em coming.

Fobia

Heh, I had an identical problem a while back, but when I did get into safe mode I had lines going down the screen.

Here's how I fixed it:
did a "dirty" install - reinstalled to the same directory. That didn't work. I knew it wasn't a hardware problem as linux still ran fine. When I tried to uninstall old gfx drivers it simply crashed....in the end I booted into safe mode with all the lines, installed newest drivers, managed to make it to the end, then when it rebooted I went into normal mode again, it worked .

Very strange problem, try that though. Into safe mode (not sure how to without having OS bootup choices..), uninstall gfx card drivers, install new ones, reboot into normal mode.

g'luck,
que

hulhi

Eurorunner wrote:

Pressing F8 pulls up a 'first boot' option list ie. cdrom/ide drive/floppy. Not sure how i can get into safe mode with this machine although i dont think it will make any differerence.
I ended up in safe mode at one stage - during my attempted reinstall of xp - and it just led to the black screen again..

Any other ideas...thanks and keep em coming.

click escape or just choose IDE Drive at the "first boot" screen then press F8 again after that

Eurorunner

@hulhi: ok, that got me into safe mode alright, but safe mode is leading to a black screen?

hulhi

Eurorunner wrote:

@hulhi: ok, that got me into safe mode alright, but safe mode is leading to a black screen?

then instead try vga mode, by the way what kind of graphics card have you got, it sounds more and more like you card is fried

Eurorunner

@hulhi: Ok, looks like vga mode is doing the trick.

Thanks for the help.

BTW, graphics card = ATI Radeon 9200 SE


Any idea what might have brought this on?

hulhi

if you've cleared the problem then driver corruption, i'd say.

Eurorunner

hmm..not quite sorted yet. When i put it in vga mode, it went back to the repair reinstall that i had initiated before - displaying the install process - but locking up and giving me no option but to reboot.

Now i am getting it going back to this install process via vga mode - but it now displays a white mouse icon with a black screen behind it.

It looks like whatever changes i need to make to correct this will have to be done at the command line..??

hulhi

have you tried at bootup going into "last known good..." somethin'?

Eurorunner

Yeah, i tried last known good config but as its effectively booted up several times since the problem occured - albeit that its obviously missing some display related drivers or something, its no longer a solution.

If my memory serves me correctly, shouldnt there be some command to copy system files from the xp disk. I should be able to do something like this from the recovery console shouldnt I ??

Sherifu

Eurorunner wrote:

Yeah, i tried last known good config but as its effectively booted up several times since the problem occured - albeit that its obviously missing some display related drivers or something, its no longer a solution.

If my memory serves me correctly, shouldnt there be some command to copy system files from the xp disk. I should be able to do something like this from the recovery console shouldnt I ??

Theres the system file checker.
sfc /scannow which works in windows.
Don't know if it works in the recovery console. :rolleyes:

Eurorunner

Ok, i have got my hands on an identical hard drive and im currently in the process of installing xp on it. From this, i should have full access to the other drive.
So, if i have drive C (system drive) and drive D (the buggered up drive), how do i go about fixing drive D - so that i can switch back to it again and use the new drive for cloned backup copies (just like i would have got round to anyways, had this minor disaster not occured).

hulhi

before delving deep into "unknown", have you tried s'thing very basic:

trying another monitor, if the cabling is of poor quality...

changing graphics card then delete/remove/uninstall all instances of your graphics card driver files, then installing it again.

Eurorunner

Well, i bit the bullet and started to reinstall everything on the new drive. As it turns out, it hasnt been so bad. It was my satellite card/software configuration - that i was most concerned about. The thought of having to go out there once more and programme in all the sat. motor positions..... :eek: ...and the buggy nature of the software that goes with it...its quite a fragile setup that takes a lot of tweaking to get right.

Anyways, it hasnt come to that. I now have most of the stuff setup as i had it before and its pushed me into using Acronis Trueimage - which will allow me to take a complete drive snapshot regularly and stick it on the backup drive. This should prevent this sorry mess from ever happening again!

The vga cable has been replaced and is that little bit longer - which works better with the way i have pc/monitor setup.

Thanks for the input hulhi.

Sherifu

Anyways, it hasnt come to that. I now have most of the stuff setup as i had it before and its pushed me into using Acronis Trueimage - which will allow me to take a complete drive snapshot regularly and stick it on the backup drive. This should prevent this sorry mess from ever happening again!

Every Cloud.................

Eurorunner

rmulryan wrote:

Every Cloud.................

Dats Roight!