A
Art
Good morning all,
I'm having trouble with a Dell Dimension Laptop running
WIN XP Pro (SP1). When I boot up the machine, the
normally friendly Windows Splash Page is now no longer
showing up, but instead, the display is black. After
approx. 6 seconds, the screen "comes back" and shows the
Login dialog box, but lasts only about 5 seconds before
the screen goes black again. I can hit FNC and F8 to
toggle the display back to visible, after which I log in
properly. The computer Display is fine after that, but I
need to know why it boots up Black. I THOUGHT it kind of
resembled some sort of "Notebook Dual-Monitor" issue,
where the box was searching for and not finding an
external monitor, so went in and checked that.
I examined the Display Settings and found that Dual
Monitors IS indeed selected (I honestly don't remember if
Default Monitor was selected before) and whatever I do, I
cannot now choose Default Monitor (which may or may not
solve the problem, I don't know). Every time I DO select
it and hit Apply, the setting reverts back to Dual
Monitors. Now, I'm not sure that's the problem or not
(it COULD be the normal setting, for all I know), but it
DOES seem odd. I've toggled back and forth between
screen 1 and 2 and tried to make each of those the
default one and then reboot (just to see what would
happen) but whatever I do, the black-out on boot-up
remains. I've adjusted Color Display Depth, Screen
Resolutions and Refresh Rates in every possible
combination, and THOSE don't help either.
You should know that the laptop has a custom DPI
setting (for a specific software package we use here) but
that has never been a problem before, this current black-
out is only a week or two old and never happened before
despite the odd DPI setting. I was wondering if it was
a screensaver or background issue (the boss DID install
one of those Slideshow Display packages a while ago, but
it ran fine for several weeks before this happened).
The box has no viruses or Spy ware on it (I checked
thoroughly), so I'm a bit baffled.
I'm not even sure if this is an XP thing (I'm about to
call DELL right now and wait an hour or six for their
support tech, so wish me luck).
I'm a graphic artist / web designer and if I can
offer any help in that area of expertise, I would be most
happy to reciprocate for any assistance I receive here.
Thanks in advance,
Art... (Yeah, it's my real name) (Funny how that works
sometimes, eh?)
I'm having trouble with a Dell Dimension Laptop running
WIN XP Pro (SP1). When I boot up the machine, the
normally friendly Windows Splash Page is now no longer
showing up, but instead, the display is black. After
approx. 6 seconds, the screen "comes back" and shows the
Login dialog box, but lasts only about 5 seconds before
the screen goes black again. I can hit FNC and F8 to
toggle the display back to visible, after which I log in
properly. The computer Display is fine after that, but I
need to know why it boots up Black. I THOUGHT it kind of
resembled some sort of "Notebook Dual-Monitor" issue,
where the box was searching for and not finding an
external monitor, so went in and checked that.
I examined the Display Settings and found that Dual
Monitors IS indeed selected (I honestly don't remember if
Default Monitor was selected before) and whatever I do, I
cannot now choose Default Monitor (which may or may not
solve the problem, I don't know). Every time I DO select
it and hit Apply, the setting reverts back to Dual
Monitors. Now, I'm not sure that's the problem or not
(it COULD be the normal setting, for all I know), but it
DOES seem odd. I've toggled back and forth between
screen 1 and 2 and tried to make each of those the
default one and then reboot (just to see what would
happen) but whatever I do, the black-out on boot-up
remains. I've adjusted Color Display Depth, Screen
Resolutions and Refresh Rates in every possible
combination, and THOSE don't help either.
You should know that the laptop has a custom DPI
setting (for a specific software package we use here) but
that has never been a problem before, this current black-
out is only a week or two old and never happened before
despite the odd DPI setting. I was wondering if it was
a screensaver or background issue (the boss DID install
one of those Slideshow Display packages a while ago, but
it ran fine for several weeks before this happened).
The box has no viruses or Spy ware on it (I checked
thoroughly), so I'm a bit baffled.
I'm not even sure if this is an XP thing (I'm about to
call DELL right now and wait an hour or six for their
support tech, so wish me luck).
I'm a graphic artist / web designer and if I can
offer any help in that area of expertise, I would be most
happy to reciprocate for any assistance I receive here.
Thanks in advance,
Art... (Yeah, it's my real name) (Funny how that works
sometimes, eh?)