[Beanbandit27]

Tonight I went to turn on my computer and I got as far as the window xp banner and then my computer monitor blinked to black and the light on the front started blinking as if it were on power-saving mode. I managed to boot up in safe mode and I tried a virus scan and a system restore to no effect. It still does the exact same thing. I ran the windows memory diagnostic tool and the first two complete passes all succeeded. I could definitely use some help with this one.

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Can you re-install the video card drivers

[Retired Tech]

Can you re-install the video card drivers

[Beanbandit27]

Just tried the reinstall of video drivers. The install was successful but I still wasn't able to boot up in normal mode. As a matter of fact, I noticed that the hard drive light showed no activity after the windows banner blinked off and would try to show the welcome screen.

[Retired Tech]

Boot the PC using the XP CD and look for a prompt to 'Press any key to boot from CD' (some systems may not ask).

Press any key on the keyboard and Windows Setup will launch

After a few minutes you will be presented with the following choices:

To setup Windows® XP now. press Enter

To Repair a Windows® XP installation using Recovery Console, press R

To quit setup without installing XP, press F3

Press R to repair the Windows® XP installation

The next screen will ask you which Windows® installation you would like to log on to. Normally the following will be listed:

1: C:\WINDOWS

Press 1 and then Enter to continue.

You may now be asked for the Administrator password. If you know this type it and press Enter. If you don't know the Administrators password it may be blank. Just press Enter

At the command prompt type:

chkdsk /r

Press Enter

Chkdsk will now check the hard drive for errors, and will attempt to repair any it finds.

This process may take a while, but when finished will go back to the same command prompt as before.

Turn off and restart the computer.

[Beanbandit27]

I'm running the chkdsk now. I was wondering... do you happen to have an easy manual on making a slipstream disk of my windows xp disk and sp2 files?

[Beanbandit27]

chkdsk done. It found one or more errors and fixed them. Unfortunately the computer still does the same exact thing. no change.

Edited by Beanbandit27, 27 August 2007 - 01:02 PM.

[Retired Tech]

Press the power button and then keep tapping the delete key (possibly F2) until it enters set up, look for BIOS defaults, load those, press F10 to save, type Y to confirm, press enter to restart

[Beanbandit27]

Done. No success. I had 2 default options, an optimized and a fail/safe. I tried both default options and both didn't change anything. computer still will not boot up after the windows banner.

[Retired Tech]

Click start, right click my computer, click properties, hardware, device manager

Click the + next to display adapter

Right click any entries, click remove - uninstall, confirm

Reboot

[Beanbandit27]

That hit something! I was able to boot up in normal mode. Of course the graphics are the default quality before I installed the video card driver. I assume now I need to download and install the latest video card driver available for my video card?

[Beanbandit27]

Downloaded the latest video driver for my video card and rebooted. Unfortunately it did the same thing. The screen went blank after the windows xp banner. I uninstalled the driver and rebooted. I was able to boot up normally. Obviously a video issue I would guess. What exactly is bad, I'm not sure. I've got an nvidia geforce fx5700 video card that's about 2 years old and gigabyte ga-7n400-l motherboard with a amd athlon xp2800+ with 512 dual-channel DDR ram.

Edited by Beanbandit27, 27 August 2007 - 03:27 PM.

[Retired Tech]

Have you got another video card you can try

[Beanbandit27]

I'll pull the video card out of the other computer and put it in. Let me do a switch around and see what happens.

Edited by Beanbandit27, 27 August 2007 - 08:02 PM.

[Beanbandit27]

Well, I just put in another video card and installed the latest driver for it. This video card works like it should. Are you thinking bad video card like I am?

[Retired Tech]

Using device manager to uninstall the video card let the PC load normally

Installing the drivers again, stopped it loading normally

Using another card with its drivers lets the PC load normally

Certainly leans toward it being the video card