screen goes blank, returns with missing toolbar icons

This is a problem that a friend of mine and I are experiencing on different pc's both running xp pro. From time to time, clicking on random files and folders, whether into or out of, the screen will go blank for a couple of seconds. When the screen returns, some of the toolbar icons are gone. My pc and my friends pc are entirely different, and run different programs represented by the icons. In fact the only 2 common features, is that we both run xp pro, and they are amd machines. But mine is a tyan scsi server board and my friends is a msi single proc amd board. My friends install is 11 months old, mine is only a few weeks. His is a fat32 install, mine is an ntfs. He has restore turned on, I have it turned off. I have turned off a lot of services per the black viper website's safe list, my friends has original settings. We both run current versions of adaware, spybot s&d, zone alarm, cwshredder. His version of mcafee has expired, I am running up to date norton antivirus. Also, I had this problem several weeks ago before I did the fresh install as well as after. My friend has had this happening for a while. That's all I can think of. I appreciate any advice you folks may have.

 

We are both running regular 17" crt's. I have an nvidia fx5200 with 256mb of ddr. He has an older 64mb nvidia card. I had the same thing happening before my recent fresh install as well as now. This time around I even took some precautions before my install. I downloaded new versions of zone alarm, spybot s&d, and cwshredder and burnt them to a disk. I did the fresh windows install, and reloaded the zone alarm, spybot s&d, cwshredder, and norton antivirus. I went to norton first and downloaded the updates. Then to microsoft for all of the updates. That's everything else I can think of.

 

Regular 17" LCD's? Are they identical? Name? Model?

Something has gotta be common whether it be the same program or same hardware. You both have the same problem, which in a troubleshooting sense is good, because you have the opportunity to compare.

 

both monitors are crt's not lcd's. Just basic glass tube stuff. Mine is a phillips. His is a kds. I should also mention that he and I both surf some of the dangerous types of sites. I've been wondering if it could be some sort of spyware because of the things that get turned off from the tool tray. On mine the following get turned off. Popup killer. The invidia desktop manager. the spybot s&d tea timer. And also the mixer. All of them are restored when I reboot. The same goes for my friends, although he has a couple of things in his toolbar that I don't have.

 

I thought of one more thing that might tell you something. One of the most common events that happens is that I get one of the microsoft warnings that say windows explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close and do I want to send the error report. When I click out of that, the screen goes blank and the icons are gone when the screen comes back. It's not always the windows explorer warning that does it, but the explorer warning does it every time that it does pop up.

 

I was doing some checking last night and it got late, do both of you use TweakUI and can you right click the taskbar and use your Toolbars command? Steve

 

I've had had this happen many times. The explorer shutdown could be caused by many things. The problem with the icons is that when explorer restarts, it does not pick up all of the icons for running programs. If you open up task manager, they will be still running. About the ony way I have found to get them all showing again is to logoff and then logon again. I read something about a repair tool that restored the icons after this happens, but never have been able to find it again.

Do a complete scan with your AV software and Spybot/AdAware. Many times, it is caused by poorly written software.

 

No, that's not what I meant.

 

Hey everybody, thanks for the ideas. David, I could have done without being jealous of the coast of spain retirement thing though. :^) But the nvidia desktop manager is one thing my friend and I have in common. I am going to delete mine now and see how that goes. I hope I can find an xp driver out there that won't have the desktop manager with it.

 

Well im not sure but i've heard about this has been happening to alot of people now lately including myself,This didn't start happening untill i installed an update from microsoft one of there critical updates,I'm not 100% positive but it is my only answer in my research.

Only way i have temporarily contained this problem is turning off error reportings.

 

The strange thing about error reporting is that I actually have it turned off in services. It just keeps trying to do it. I don't know why. But anyway, that isn't the only time it happens. My friend has a particular folder that just clicking on it, he gets an error reporting popup which of course causes the blankout that knocks out some of the toolbar icons. By the way, I have checked the taskmanager and the only icon that is represented at all in there is popup killer. That is, before the screen blank thing. I know it's a long shot but I never had this problem on my old setup which was an intel pentium 3 866 processor with a super micro scsi motherboard. My new setup is a Tyan scsi motherboard with twin 2200 MP processors. I am running all of the hardware exactly the same as it was with the intel setup. My friend runs a 2500 xp processor on an MSI motherboard. I can't see what the similarity could be with the differences, but I thought I should mention that.

 

O.K., here's what I came up with so far. I had been downloading the nvidia update from microsoft. So I decided to try from nvidia this time. I also turned off the error reporting by going to Start>right click my computer>options>advanced>error reporting and click turn off error reporting. I don't know why or how that is different than turning off error reporting in services via the computer management but it is. I have been running the computer through every kind of routine I could think of and I haven't had the screen go blank once.

 

That is death. Always get your video driver updates from nvidia (or ati) or the card manufacturer.