No video on Vista 64 startup

[Guest]

I have a quad-boot Intel CoreDuo machine with 4 GB of memory and an
ATI AIW X1900 Radeon (multi-booting courtesy of EasyBCD). To put the
matter as quickly as possible, all four systems (Vista 32, Vista 64,
XP, and Ubuntu) have been happily coexisting for a long time. I
haven't used Vista 64 for about 10 days and went in to do some work on
it this morning. To my surprise, the video disappeared immediately
after the green startup wait indicator. Eventually, after about the
usual amount of time and hard disk activity, the startup sound came on
but absolutely no video.

I restored my full backup of the Vista 64 partition from last Sunday—
same problem!

I went in on safe mode but it is impossible to change video settings
or install new drivers in safe mode so that was a dead end.

I tried the repair utility that comes with Vista but it could find no
problem with startup.

My working hypothesis is that something has gone wrong with the video
drivers although that may not be the case. Even if it were, I can
think of no way of fixing it short of completely rebuilding the Vista
64 system checked desperately do not want to do!

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get out of this mess?

 

[Guest]

Please excuse the undetected speech-recognition typo. The last
sentence in the second last paragraph should have read:

Even if it were, I can

 

[John Barnes]

I have changed video settings in safe mode several times as late as last
weekend when I had to swap monitors due to a transformer dying. I also have
Vista64. Have you tried low resolution mode? You could uninstall the
driver in safe mode thru control panel/uninstall a program. Most video
drivers are there. You should be able to install the new driver, either
there or back in regular mode if the uninstall works. If you are getting an
error message in safe mode while trying to install the driver, let us know
what it is. I would try changing the resolution and frequency Hz first.

 

[Guest]

I have changed video settings in safe mode several times as late as last
weekend when I had to swap monitors due to a transformer dying. I also have
Vista64. Have you tried low resolution mode? You could uninstall the
driver in safe mode thru control panel/uninstall a program. Most video
drivers are there. You should be able to install the new driver, either
there or back in regular mode if the uninstall works. If you are getting an
error message in safe mode while trying to install the driver, let us know
what it is. I would try changing the resolution and frequency Hz first.

Something has obviously gone very wrong with the video driver. First,
when I look at it in safe mode, the only ATI entry in the program the
control-panel uninstall list is the ATI install program. I can't
uninstall, change, or repair it, however, because Vista says the
Windows installer is not available in safe mode.

I've also used VistaBootPro to make the offending Vista 64 system use
VGA mode (reasoning that if I could get into a normal session I could
reinstall the ATI drivers) but when I restart, there's no change in
behavior. Same thing if I set to boot with "base Video" in msconfig--
no change!!! Bizarre!

 

[John Barnes]

Have you tried 'roll back driver' in device manager? System Restore another
possibility, and first, probably would be to try 'last know good' from the
F8 menu.

 

[Guest]

Have you tried 'roll back driver' in device manager? System Restore another
possibility, and first, probably would be to try 'last know good' from the
F8 menu.

I've tried system restore but there are no restore points--even though
I'm using the EasyBCD/neogrub volume-hiding approach to avoiding
having XP clobber Vista restore points. F8 options yes including last
working. I'll give driver roll back a try.

Thanks so much!

 

[Guest]

I've tried system restore but there are no restore points--even though
I'm using the EasyBCD/neogrub volume-hiding approach to avoiding
having XP clobber Vista restore points. F8 options yes including last
working. I'll give driver roll back a try.

Thanks so much!

 

[Guest]

I've tried system restore but there are no restore points--even though
I'm using the EasyBCD/neogrub volume-hiding approach to avoiding
having XP clobber Vista restore points. F8 options yes including last
working. I'll give driver roll back a try.

Thanks so much!

What I have discovered:
1. I can access the system in safe mode
2. when I do so, there is no video-controller device listed in device
manager
3. a hardware scan in safe mode does not recognize the video board
4. attempting to reinstall the ATI driver fails because the
installation does not find the board
5. I cannot access the system in low-resolution mode
6. I cannot get boot logging to work

I now believe that this problem may have resulted from some nasty
interaction between Windows Speech-Recognition and ATI Catalyst the
last time I used the system. All kinds of strange things began to
occur with Catalyst. I would guess that Windows Speech-Recognition
somehow interacts with Catalyst, probably because of the notorious ATI
External Event Utility. If I ever get this working, I'm going to
permanently disable that largely useless and known-to-be-buggy
utility.

Is there anything I can do to save the system or will I have to nuke
it and start over?

 

[John Barnes]

You can try a repair install if you have matching versions of Vista. If you
have Vista installed without SP1, you can use your disk for a repair
install. If you have a disk without SP1 and SP1 has been installed, you can
uninstall it (if you haven't deleted the file, as I see some have done to
save disk space) and then do the repair install. You can then reapply SP1.
This will at least save your programs installed and most settings.
I think I would run sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt first and
see if that finds any damaged system files. You can then try to replace
them first.
Good luck.

 

[John Barnes]

I would also consider posting on the 64-bit newsgroup as there are many
talented posters there that don't participate here.
microsoft.public.windows.64bit.general

 

[Guest]

You can try a repair install if you have matching versions of Vista. If you
have Vista installed without SP1, you can use your disk for a repair
install. If you have a disk without SP1 and SP1 has been installed, you can
uninstall it (if you haven't deleted the file, as I see some have done to
save disk space) and then do the repair install. You can then reapply SP1.
This will at least save your programs installed and most settings.
I think I would run sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt first and
see if that finds any damaged system files. You can then try to replace
them first.
Good luck.

This morning I came down to my office with the not-so-bright idea of
unplugging the DIV connection to my Samsung Syncmaster monitor and
trying the motherboard connector on the theory that just maybe it
wasn't disabled--although they always are I believe with a separate
video board. No luck but bad!! when I plugged the monitor back in I
was down to 1087 resolution and in trying to fix it in Catalyst I lost
all video. Now my Vista 32 installation--my usual working system--is
in exactly the same state as my Vista 64 (no video, showing no video
controller in device manager in Safe Mode, etc.). Is this some cruel
ATI joke???? Meanwhile XP continues to soldier along faithfully so
it's not the monitor.

 

[Guest]

This morning I came down to my office with the not-so-bright idea of
unplugging the DIV connection to my Samsung Syncmaster monitor and
trying the motherboard connector on the theory that just maybe it
wasn't disabled--although they always are I believe with a separate
video board. No luck but bad!! when I plugged the monitor back in I
was down to 1087 resolution and in trying to fix it in Catalyst I lost
all video. Now my Vista 32 installation--my usual working system--is
in exactly the same state as my Vista 64 (no video, showing no video
controller in device manager in Safe Mode, etc.). Is this some cruel
ATI joke???? Meanwhile XP continues to soldier along faithfully so
it's not the monitor.

Problem solved--silly me--video was being rerouted to TV upstairs.
Unplugged, reset, all is well!
Thanks very much for suggestions--and just being there!

 

[John Barnes]

Great to hear you solved it. Both 32 and 64 I take it.

 

[Guest]

Great to hear you solved it. Both 32 and 64 I take it.

Yes! All is well!