Blank screen in normal mode

[brk1221]

Dell Inspiron 531 Desktop - Vista Home Premium - In normal mode it boots to the windows splash screen and then to a blank screen (no cursor or pointer). It will boot into Safe mode with no problem. I tried a clean boot (disabling 3rd party services) with no success. I unseated the memory and video card also. No new hardware has been added. Any suggestions?

Thanks
Tim

 

[linney]

Does it boot to "Enable low-resolution video (640×480)" in the Safe Mode boot options?

It is possible that your Video Card has died. You could try uninstalling the Display Adapter via Device Manager then reinstalling it. Checking for any updated driver and installing that might help.

If none of the above is possible from Safe Mode, or any other Mode, see if your machine will boot into Normal Mode if you just Disable the Display Adapter in the Device Manager.

Advanced startup options (including safe mode)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Advanced-startup-options-including-safe-mode

 

[brk1221]

Well i uninstalled the display driver and it booted up in normal mode. The video is standard vga. So it looks like it's the wrong drivers or the card is bad. I'm currently downloading drivers from nvidia.

 

[brk1221]

After installing the latest driver from Nvidia's web site without error, I rebooted and got the black screen Re-booted in safe mode, disabled the driver and rebooted into normal mode. I think the next step is to swap out the video card.

 

[rclarke250]

I had a windows 2000 machine do that after a windows update hosed the driver, I had to delete the driver while in safe mode,than let it boot to windows,than install the newest driver, and it worked again at least till the company went out of business 3 months ago.

 

[flyboytim]

One of the Live Linux CDs may help check the Nvidia card's resolution. Mint Linux is one I use,just plug and play.

 

[RichLee]

Does the screen appear if you move the mouse?

If it does, then check the screen-saver interval - I saw a similar issue and the screensaver was set to appear after zero minutes.

Richard.