Screen goes blank at bootup

Dirkpitt289

Dirkpitt289

New Member
Ok here is my latest dilemma. I have a Dell Dimension 8200. When I try to turn it on the following happens.

First the Dell Splash screen comes up (as it should), then the Windows XP Splash screen comes up, next the Keyboard check is done then the screen goes blank. But the power button on the machine and monitor stays green. The only way out is a hard shut down.

Any ideas?
 
Windows is locking there. You will probably have to perform a repair install to see a normal running system there. One question that comes up right now is have you made any recent changes in softwares such as installing or removing anything lately? A bad install of an update for hardware can often see problems come up. Have you tried booting in safe mode?
 
Try booting up with only the essential items on the motherboard, cpu, ram, harddrive and video card and see what happens.
 
Booting in safe mode removes all other startups and loads only the basic OS. This is used for repair and removal of problem softwares. The other option is for the manual startup of the system restore process to bring the system back before the problem was first seen provided you have enough restore points for this. The MS article gives details on performing a system restore from the command prompt. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;304449
 
Well I've tried booting up in safe mode but I can't find the issue. I tired looking at the System event viewer but nothing is standing out, The only errors are some programs that fail to start in safe mode like DCOM "This service cannot be started in safe mode"

The owner told me that this started after he installed the latest security patch. Just to be safe I uninstalled all the latest security patches and Service Pack 2 but it still won't boot.

I have all the disks and could probably do a complete re-install but that will take a bit of time. I will need to try and remove all the files and pictures first. But foremost it won't tell me what the problem is.

I just looked in the system restore and it appears no restore points have been made. Plenty of system check points but no restore points

I'm open to more suggestions if anyone has any.

Thanks
 
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An "install to repair" with XP preserves all of the files and folders while correcting the basics needed to get Windows up and running. A well prepared on performing can be read at http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

For most this one slips right past them and they wipe a drive instead of repairing the current installation. This method works only once however. Once you perform a repair install and goof things up again the next attempt will delete the current for a new one. Often that will delete the partition along with it. But when you can't isolate a specific problem or have a stubborn spyware infection this can be a winning ticket to get things going.
 
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