No picture on screen

[Helen49]

the following symptoms occurred:
during start up, lots Of noises from PC
Windows XP welcome screen appears
then screen goes blank and remains blank
PC appears to have started

any ideas please? without a screen picture I am somewhat stuck!!!
[Athlon XP Mega 180
160gb hard drive
1gb RAM]

H49

[BOAC]

Start in safe mode?

[Helen49]

Thank you BOAC, but how do I do that without a screen picture??
H49

[maxell]

switch the computer on and press F8 it should give you the option of starting in safe mode.
If it starts in safe mode try a restore back to the day before the problem started

[BOAC]

Helen - since you were obviously online I assumed you would have done a bit of research:confused:

If not, start here. (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308041#XSLTH4157121123120121120120) It tells you how to start in Safe (as has maxell) and what to do then.

[Conan the Librarian]

The machine is hanging and so does not get onto the fruitier and yet more problem frought part of Windows. What is being said here is that you can con your machine into completing its start up routine and getting you to familiar grounds, with icons, screens and all that jazz.

If you follow the advice given so far, you will see an option to start in "safe" mode. This will be a black screen with ordinary text upon it rather than the familiar Windows look. Read the options carefully and you might also see an option to start in last known working mode or similar. Go for that one first and you should be ok.

When this happens, Windows has had a little hissy fit normally caused by either new software being added, which Win does not much like, or new hardware, which has confused Windows to the point where it simply hangs. The good thing, is that there is nothing wrong with your screen as such and that most often, Windows will restart without further ado.

If in the deep stuff, then post here from your other machine and the inmates will do what they can to get you up and running once more.

No need to panic - yet :-)

Conan

[Saab Dastard]

It does sound like either a graphics card failure or graphics driver problem.

It seems to be occurring at the point when the display changes from VGA to XVGA. Either a hardware or software problem is preventing the O/S from switching from basic 640 x 480 8-bit VGA 60 Hz. mode to the glories of 1280 x 1024 x 32-bit XVGA at 85 Hz. - or whatever you were running.

You weren't changing the screen resolution / refresh rate by any chance?

You can eliminate the monitor from your enquiries by plugging it into another PC and checking that it works OK. It is possible, but unlikely, that the monitor is at fault.

[Helen49]

Thank you everybody....plenty to explore and hopefully resolve problem. (BOAC...I am working on a laptop at present!).

H49

[Devlin Carnet]

Mmmm... I stand to be corrected, But I didnt think you could do a system restore in safe mode.