Windows XP - screen suddenly goes black except for cursor
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:27 pm
Hi,
This problem has just appeared, and I've no idea what caused it, and would love to get any suggestions on how to solve it!
My system:
Thinkpad t60 (8445BU) with discrete ATI X1400 card, 15.4" screen.
A couple of hours ago I booted into windows, then suddenly after half a minute or so of use (i don't think all the background progs had finished loading, but i had opened up diskeeper because it had started defragging my external drive again) the screen suddenly went black, except for the mouse cursor. There wasn't much i could do, so I killed it with the power button.
Booting to safe mode was fine, no issues. I tried a system restore to yesterday, but that didn't solve the problem.
I disabled startup items / services that may have had an effect - diskeeper, ATI catalyst control center. This didn't solve the problem either.
Sometimes the screen is black as soon as the windows logo splash screen goes away, other times i get a minute or so of desktop, enough to log in, before it bombs.
I can also boot via "VGA mode" (another F8-on-boot setting) however when i tried to resize the screen resolution from 640x480 to 1024x768 it went black again).
I don't think this is a problem with the graphics card itself, because I can still see the mouse cursor. Also, I'm dual booting with linux, which is working perfectly (fglrx 8.37.6). I can't think of anything that i did in linux between windows-working and windows-not-working that might have been the cause. So I think something must have happened to the windows drivers.
Either way I can't try to reinstall them because the latest ati installer seems to have to check your system to ensure that the correct card is present before it will even download the drivers - and when i'm in safe mode / vga mode, the adapter is disabled so the installer says that ther is no card in!
Has anyone seen or heard of this black screen problem before, or have any suggestions as to how to fix it? Please help!
Richard
This problem has just appeared, and I've no idea what caused it, and would love to get any suggestions on how to solve it!
My system:
Thinkpad t60 (8445BU) with discrete ATI X1400 card, 15.4" screen.
A couple of hours ago I booted into windows, then suddenly after half a minute or so of use (i don't think all the background progs had finished loading, but i had opened up diskeeper because it had started defragging my external drive again) the screen suddenly went black, except for the mouse cursor. There wasn't much i could do, so I killed it with the power button.
Booting to safe mode was fine, no issues. I tried a system restore to yesterday, but that didn't solve the problem.
I disabled startup items / services that may have had an effect - diskeeper, ATI catalyst control center. This didn't solve the problem either.
Sometimes the screen is black as soon as the windows logo splash screen goes away, other times i get a minute or so of desktop, enough to log in, before it bombs.
I can also boot via "VGA mode" (another F8-on-boot setting) however when i tried to resize the screen resolution from 640x480 to 1024x768 it went black again).
I don't think this is a problem with the graphics card itself, because I can still see the mouse cursor. Also, I'm dual booting with linux, which is working perfectly (fglrx 8.37.6). I can't think of anything that i did in linux between windows-working and windows-not-working that might have been the cause. So I think something must have happened to the windows drivers.
Either way I can't try to reinstall them because the latest ati installer seems to have to check your system to ensure that the correct card is present before it will even download the drivers - and when i'm in safe mode / vga mode, the adapter is disabled so the installer says that ther is no card in!
Has anyone seen or heard of this black screen problem before, or have any suggestions as to how to fix it? Please help!
Richard