screen goes blank during boot or after

  • Thread starter Thread starter martas
  • Start date Start date
M

martas

Hi all

I have a Pentium III computer with Win 2000 on it. It has worked fin
for a long time, but, after two nasty accidents, it began to... well
let me tell about the accidents first

One accident was that I got a virus through Outlook. I got a friend t
fix my computer, which he did by running an antivirus (NO wi
reinstall). The second bad thing was that, for about two long weeks
some idiot kept turning off the power (yeah, there is a big powe
switch just outside my office :])

After this crap I have the following problem: while booting everythin
is fine until I reach the log on screen. And when I do, after a whil
my screen goes blank, that is my monitor goes into power saving mode
Sometimes I am able to log on, and even work for 10 or 20 minutes, bu
that blank screen is inevitable. It never happens outside of Win 200
- I copied a lot of files from my C drive to the D drive through m
bootable Norton Commander, which took more than 30 minutes, an
everything was all right

I would think that this is a software problem, but I think this is no
obvious because, after all, DOS requires from video cards only
fraction of what Windows does. To make sure I formatted an
reinstalled windows, but during the install, when it was alread
doing hardware stuff (the dos part of the installation was over) i
happened again! Still, this does not make me sure that something'
wrong with my hardware, since many computers hang during Win install
I did not start my computer again after that, I decided it would b
better to ask you people for advice

My questions are the following
1. Is this a hardware or software problem? Or maybe something's wron
with my motherboard/BIOS setup
2. If it is hardware, will it get fixed if I change my video card
3. Any other advices

Thank you all a lot! It is thanks to people like you that civilizatio
still exists... :

marta

P.S. I do not know what exactly my video card is, but it is AGP fo
sure
 
I'm assuming when the power was turned off, the computer was running?
If this is the case, your video driver may have been corrupted. As
check, right click my computer, click on the hardware tab and then o
the device manager button, find your video card, highlight it an
click properties, tell it to reinstall/ upgrade the driver and let i
look for it itself. If it finds it, it'll install it by itself an
that should fix your problem. I don't believe it's that simpl
though

I would think it wouldn't be a hardware problem, as turning off th
power wouldn't hurt any hardware. Assuming all worked well before

You may also try going into control panel/ power settings and tell i
to always leave your monitor on. Windows is funny, sometimes i
doesn't see activity and blanks the screen. This seems to be ho
it's acting. The monitor going into sleep mode, is doing so becaus
of no video signal going to it

If hands have been inside your box, you may want to pull the vide
card out and re-seat it

I hope this help
 
martas said:
Hi all.

I have a Pentium III computer with Win 2000 on it. It has worked fine
for a long time, but, after two nasty accidents, it began to... well,
let me tell about the accidents first.

One accident was that I got a virus through Outlook. I got a friend to
fix my computer, which he did by running an antivirus (NO win
reinstall). The second bad thing was that, for about two long weeks,
some idiot kept turning off the power (yeah, there is a big power
switch just outside my office :]).

After this crap I have the following problem: while booting everything
is fine until I reach the log on screen. And when I do, after a while
my screen goes blank, that is my monitor goes into power saving mode.
Sometimes I am able to log on, and even work for 10 or 20 minutes, but
that blank screen is inevitable. It never happens outside of Win 2000
- I copied a lot of files from my C drive to the D drive through my
bootable Norton Commander, which took more than 30 minutes, and
everything was all right.

I would think that this is a software problem, but I think this is not
obvious because, after all, DOS requires from video cards only a
fraction of what Windows does. To make sure I formatted and
reinstalled windows, but during the install, when it was already
doing hardware stuff (the dos part of the installation was over) it
happened again! Still, this does not make me sure that something's
wrong with my hardware, since many computers hang during Win install.
I did not start my computer again after that, I decided it would be
better to ask you people for advice.

My questions are the following:
1. Is this a hardware or software problem? Or maybe something's wrong
with my motherboard/BIOS setup?
2. If it is hardware, will it get fixed if I change my video card?
3. Any other advices?

Thank you all a lot! It is thanks to people like you that civilization
still exists... :]

martas

P.S. I do not know what exactly my video card is, but it is AGP for
sure.
Click to expand...


This may be a H/W problem that just happens to coincide with your "accidents".
Check that all the fans in the system are spinning freely - especially the graphics card fan (if there is one).

HTH

Brian[/QUOTE]
 
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