Black Screen nada...

Greetings-

I have exhausted all I can think of before asking here...(cool similar thread pop-up you have here now btw, ...but not finding answers therein).

I'm trying to resurrect a used desktop for my son here, and from the start have had a black screen issue on start-up. I have gone through all I can think of and still no success. I have done the following:

• checked monitor on other system
• replaced power supply
• blown out partitions and reformated 2 seperate drives
• performed factory-fresh instals of XP-Pro on both drives

When I turn on system it shows the Win XP logo and the animated status bar, then the screen goes pitch black for a moment...and then it blinks and appears a hardly discernible static filled black for several moments...It then flashes a very quick blue-screen (for the life of me I can't catch what it says) and it reboots. When I began all this it just hung on the static screen and did nothing more. I assumed there was a damaged physical or soft boot-sector or the like on the HD, hence the from scratch format and install.

What I don't understand is I CAN boot to safe mode, and all appears normal. So, I am assuming it is not the video card, the HD's or the OS...

Any advise how to proceed from here...?

Feedback greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance!!!

Fishead

 

did you check for swollen capacitors.

It is also possible that the video card is not working correctly, even though you can boot into safe mode.

I would perform a RAM-test just to be sure, and a sea-tools check on the HDD to ensure reliability.

If you don't know how to do any of those, just ask. It seems to me you have a minor hardware issue that only surfaces when you try to boot windows completely. Really sounds like a HDD issue to me.

 

Hello and thanks for feedback!

I thought HDD too, but having tried two separate formatted drives with fresh OS installs and having exact same results...

I was talking with a new computer friend this afternoon, and he brought to light it may be the HP board and drivers need and are not getting but instead, my new XP-Pro are throwing generic display drivers at...it didn't occur to me that board (may) have onboard video and creating driver conflicts in the boot process...does this sound on track to you?

I will try pulling the video-card and restarting it tomorrow, see if I can then add the AGP slot vid-card afterward...failing that I will see if I can find the HP drivers first and try again and see if I can get this picky lil box running. If all fails...I will be back soon eh to take you up on your recommendations. Correct you are, I may need a bit of guidance as I'm not familiar with seatools, and RAM testing...

Wish me luck and thanks very much for you input!

 

Hi,

Boot and Safe mode are using the Video driver from the BIOS and your video card. I would guess that it's a Video Driver issue but could always be a bad Video Card. Remember, Electronics is capable of 1,000,000 plus errors per second.

Good Luck, Jim