Black screen stopping me from finishing RC1 Installation

[Guest]

I'm trying to install Vista RC1, but when it rebooted and loaded up, the
screen would go black indefinitely, the light on my monitor blinks when this
happens, indicating I'm not getting any signal or theres a different problem.
I tried finishing the installation in Safe mode but Vista will not finish the
installation in Safe Mode. I also tried in basic VGA mode but I only got a
black screen still. Can anyone help me with this? I have a Radeon x1600xt

 

[MICHAEL]

I'm trying to install Vista RC1, but when it rebooted and loaded up, the
screen would go black indefinitely, the light on my monitor blinks when this
happens, indicating I'm not getting any signal or theres a different problem.
I tried finishing the installation in Safe mode but Vista will not finish the
installation in Safe Mode. I also tried in basic VGA mode but I only got a
black screen still. Can anyone help me with this? I have a Radeon x1600xt

Are you doing an upgrade install or clean install?
If you are upgrading- are you upgrading a Vista version
or WinXP?

I had this happen once when I was upgrading 5384 to 5536.

The upgrade install took over 80 minutes to get to the screen
"Please wait while Windows loads for the first time"- the screen
would go black and then automatically restart. I ended up doing
a clean install. That was the only time that an upgrade install did
work. I have had various Vista versions on two different machines.

If folks are upgrading, it might be worth the time to uninstall some
programs, even if they aren't flagged by Vista's compatibility check.
I would uninstall any AVs, especially. Maybe, any program that you
have installed that took "WindowsXP compatibility mode" to work.


-Michael

 

[Guest]

It's a clean install onto a secondary internal hard drive. The screen goes
black after the "loading for the first time" screen and it would stay that
way, it would not automatically reboot either.

 

[MICHAEL]

It's a clean install onto a secondary internal hard drive. The screen goes
black after the "loading for the first time" screen and it would stay that
way, it would not automatically reboot either.

Hmm... When this happened to me and I came to that screen
it just restarted after a few minutes, never would get past that.
Maybe a silly question- but are you sure you are giving it enough
time to finish? I know during several installs, there have been
moments when I thought the install had frozen. I saw no disk
activity, either. But I just waited and they all have finished except
for that one time.

Try unplugging any USB devices. Then just plug them back in
after the install.


-Michael

 

[John Barnes]

Have you tried to boot it into Safe Mode. It may be a video driver problem.
Also your refresh rate or resolution may have to be adjusted in VGA mode.

 

[Guest]

I had left it for more than half an hour, there was no response from the hard
drive or anything else.

I can't complete the setup in Safe Mode.

 

[pennhaven]

I had left it for more than half an hour, there was no response from the hard
drive or anything else.

I can't complete the setup in Safe Mode.

I am experiencing exactly the same problem with a system using an ATI
X1800GTO display adapter. Beta 2 installed with no problem. But RC1
video is DOA even with a partition reformat and clean install. What
video card are you using?

 

[pennhaven]

I am experiencing exactly the same problem with a system using an ATI
X1800GTO display adapter. Beta 2 installed with no problem. But RC1
video is DOA even with a partition reformat and clean install. What
video card are you using?

Sorry, you already stated what your video card was up top!

Maybe this will help. It was a lot of trouble but at least it worked for me.

I *finally* got RC1 x86 to install by leaving it in "completing
installation / black screen state" for about two hours before pressing
the power button to initiate a shutdown. Then, in order to reboot, I had
to first disconnect/reconnect my power supply before pressing the power
button (would not restart until I performed this step). Fortunately I
then obtained a video signal long enough to complete the installation.

*However there was no video again on the next start up!* So I rebooted
into safe mode and replaced the ATI drivers installed by Vista RC1 with
the later drivers from the ATI Catalyst RC1 beta. Now RC1 is up and
working. My video card is a Power Color Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB.
Motherboard is an Asus A8R32-MVP.