ACCIDENTALLY TURNED OFF VIDEO DISPLAY

[Guest]

Anybody know how to turn it back on? My computer boots up just fine, loads
windows (XP media edition) just fine but then the video display disappears.
HELP?

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Can you see anything while the computer is booting? What do you see?

 

[Guest]

This is how I created the problem:
Right-click desktop, properties, settings, advanced, adapter,
properties, device usage drop-down menu, turn-off device.
Computer boots up just fine and just after the windows logo appears it goes
dark.

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Start here:

"How to start your computer by using the Last Known Good Configuration
feature in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307852/en-us

 

[Guest]

I did that and continued through to article #306084 and windows does restart
as it did before but because the display is the system does not seem to
recognize it as a bad configuration. I was thinking it was going to give me
a list of dates to choose to restore to but it doesn't. It just does what it
was doing before; starting windows then going blank.

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Very good. That eliminates several possibilities.

If the monitor or video cable were broken, you wouldn't see anything at all.

If the video cable was not connected properly or one of the pins was bent,
the image would flash on and off at unpredictable times, or the color would
be off.

If the video card was bad, an image would appear but it would look all
psychedelic.

It could be your video driver. To check, start the computer in Safe Mode,
which bypasses your video driver in favor of Windows' built in VGA driver.
If the image looks fine in Safe Mode, time to reinstall (or update) your
video driver.

It could be a virus or other malware.

[Less likely] It could be that you have your video set to a resolution or
frequency that your monitor can't handle, so it immediately shuts itself
down as soon as the desktop tries to load. In that case, change the
resolution (e.g. 1024 X 768) or frequency (e.g. 75Hz) to a setting your
monitor can handle.

 

[Chelsea]

I think if this were me I would remove the graphics card from the pc and
replace it with another one. It wouldn't matter what it was as long as its
different to the one in situ. XP will recognise the new hardware and allow
you to logon, then reverse the operation put the original graphics card
back. Hopefully it will be recognised as a new device and most importantly
an enabled device. The other thing that might work is using the
administrators account and creating a new system account for yourself. The
trouble with that is you will lose access to myDocuments, your email
accounts, favourites and probably a host of other personalised settings.


Chelsea

 

[Guest]

I know it's not a hardware problem or software problem because I actually
turned the video display off under Advanced Display Properties. If I can
turn it off shouldn't I just be able to turn it back on? Somehow? Through
DOS, or BIOS or safe mode?

Very good. That eliminates several possibilities.

If the monitor or video cable were broken, you wouldn't see anything at all.

If the video cable was not connected properly or one of the pins was bent,
the image would flash on and off at unpredictable times, or the color would
be off.

If the video card was bad, an image would appear but it would look all
psychedelic.

It could be your video driver. To check, start the computer in Safe Mode,
which bypasses your video driver in favor of Windows' built in VGA driver.
If the image looks fine in Safe Mode, time to reinstall (or update) your
video driver.

It could be a virus or other malware.

[Less likely] It could be that you have your video set to a resolution or
frequency that your monitor can't handle, so it immediately shuts itself
down as soon as the desktop tries to load. In that case, change the
resolution (e.g. 1024 X 768) or frequency (e.g. 75Hz) to a setting your
monitor can handle.
--
Ted Zieglar
"Have you backed up today?"

I did that and continued through to article #306084 and windows does restart
as it did before but because the display is the system does not seem to
recognize it as a bad configuration. I was thinking it was going to give me
a list of dates to choose to restore to but it doesn't. It just does what it
was doing before; starting windows then going blank.

 

[Guest]

I tried taking the card out and then putting it back in and that didn't work.
I will try and install a different video card tonight but you'd think when
you actually turn something off you would be able to turn it back on again.
I was reading under Help & Support and they were talk about common tasks
under display properties but they don't talk about advanced tasks under
display properties and that's where I turned it off at. Hmmm?

 

[Chelsea]

You don't say what type of graphics card it is, but one would assume its AGP
or PCI Express. If you could find a pci graphics card, you should be able to
see the logon screen once again and be able to go directly into device
manager and directly re-enable the AGP card. Trouble is PCI graphics cards
are thin on the ground these days. I think you probably will get video back
when you put a different graphics card in as it will be treated as a
completely different device, the big question then is what happens when the
original card gets put back in? Hardware detection should occur, but will it
remember it was previously disabled. Please let us know the outcome.

Chelsea

 

[RobertVA]

This is how I created the problem:
Right-click desktop, properties, settings, advanced, adapter,
properties, device usage drop-down menu, turn-off device.
Computer boots up just fine and just after the windows logo appears it goes
dark.


:

Have you tried starting Windows in safe mode to access the dialog where
you turned the monitor off?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for responding. I'm not sure that's been tried. How would I go about
doing that?