new xp install, blank screen after splash screen (or reboot after)

[jennnn]

This is making me mental

K7 Pro (MS-6196) motherboard with 600MHz AMD Duron Processor. NVidia TNT M64 video card. 128 meg ram. Crappy old 15" plug and play monitor. It had WinME on it and it was acting funny so I was asked to format and install windows XP. Fine. I updated the BIOS to the most recent. I installed WinXP. I get to the end of the installation and am left in windows up and running. Then I reboot. I see the splash screen, then the monitor goes blank, with the yellow light flashing. However I can still hear the hard drive churning like windows was still booting up, which I'm sure it was. I made sure the BIOS was set for AGP primary video and there is no onboard video. I also know the card works. I decided to clear the CMOS and start fresh. Now the computer just keeps rebooting. I get the splash screen, then another blue windows screen with a LOT of text shows up but its too fast to see what it says, then it starts to reboot again and asking for safe mode.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Jen

 

[jennnn]

sorry....... mobo is MS-6195

 

[wlpsyp]

Do you have a PCI video card handy? Put in a PCI Video card, get it up and running then install the 4x1 VIA drivers to "activate" the AGP slot. I would reset the BIOS to Optimized or Default settings then with the PCI card you should be golden. if not, re-post and .......

Bill

 

[jsauce]

If this is a new installation it is possible that the Drivers for your card that came with Windows XP weren't sufficient enough. It sounds queer but it has happened before. Have you tried using the Boot Into VGA MODE? When the machine boots up just before ths splash screen runs hit F8 and the screen with boot options will appear. Select VGA mode. Then after windows starts install the newest driver available from your manufacturers website that is compatible with Windows XP. Some manufacturers didn't have the proper drivers ready when Windows XP hit the market and the ones that were included were horrible in most cases not supporting DirectX or OpenGL at all. Try this and see how it goes. John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator

 

[jennnn]

I hit the F8, selected VGA mode and the same thing happened. Blue screen with text flashed up fast then the computer rebooted only to repeat the same cycle again. The funny this is that it worked right after I installed XP. I wanted to get it hooked up to the router so I could download all the latest drivers for everything..... and the second I had to reboot this problem came up. I get a nice screen in safe mode so that means the video card must work properly right?

And I have no PCI video card. I'd have to go get a cheapie off ebay.

Still frustrated grrrrrrrrr

lol

Jen

 

[jennnn]

I downloaded the latest drivers for the card and installed them in safe mode. It asked me to reboot and I did. And windows started up normally. It also said it found an new video controller and installed the drivers for it. So it did that. I rebooted again. Same problem..... splash screen, then text screen flashed, then it started to reboot all over again. I'm thinking the AGP slot is fried. But the computer was at least working before it came to me. It was just quirky. Not video quirky, but it would hang and give errors sometimes, or so I'm told.

Totally stumped.

 

[jsauce]

I guess you could try installing a pci video card. It could be that your motherboard is hosed at least with respect to your AGP. John D. Saucier
jsauce@magicguild.com
Certified Technician
Network Administrator

 

[jennnn]

Yea I've thought about that, but it doesn't make sense that these problems are only occuring now. The video was fine before I got the computer.

I finally rebooted the computer enough times to be able to read a few words off of that text screen. The jist of it was "unmountable boot volume", which from the microsoft website indicates that either the bootsector was corrupt or the cable hard drive cable is the wrong kind. I used the recovery console to scan the disk, reboot, same problem. I used the recovery console to "fixboot" and it said it fixed the corrupt boot sector. Still have the same problem.

Just now I put in another brand new hard drive with the proper cable. I got xp installed and I had the blank screen problem, with the monitor going blank after the splash screen. I started it up in VGA mode, got into windows and checked out the display. It still showed the video card as being active, and I was able to change the resolution. Now I'm trying the old hard drive with the new cable.

I'm dying to tell them just to buy another computer

We'll see how this goes.

Jen

 

[jennnn]

Its working now

I put the old hard drive back in with the new cable. Formatted the hard drive and installed WinXP. When I rebooted, I got a blank screen, so I booted into VGA mode. At that point, I decreased the resolution of the screen. I've rebooted it about 10 times now and so far it looks good.

Thanks for all the help and ideas!

Jen