First Vista Problem!!

Fothsn

Fothsn

Fothsn

Soldato
Joined
2 Nov 2006
Posts
3,997
Location
Leeds, West Yorks.
Looks like I’ve had my first major problem under Vista :(


This morning I turned the PC on went away for 5mins only to come back to a black screen (the pc was still powered on) strange I thought, restarted again seemed ok vista boot screen was loading then again a black screen, just at the moment before you see the orb.

Diagnose time I thought :p restarted the PC selected safe mode again the same problem a black screen, then selected safe mode with networking and again a black screen :( This is the point I am panicking wondering what’s happened to my lovely Vista install, I can’t work out what’s happened. Just a normal night last night, no software installs or drivers etc just was browsing the net & listening to music.


Any thoughts? Would love to fix this without having to format and restart over again it’s taken me a week to customise this OS. :)
 
I get a long pause with a blank screen before the 'orb' when booting Vista, are you sure you ware waiting long enough for it to load up?

There is no activity whatsoever, so it may look like its hung.
 
Thanks for the reply Nismo :)

Before I had no waiting to see the orb after the boot screen, Vista boots fairly quick, I’ve just left the PC running now for 15mins and its still the black screen :confused: so that’s ruled out not waiting long enough.

There’s nothing at all displayed just a black screen, although I can hear the HDD's clicking?
 
Does you monitor go on standby or is it still on? If it goes on standby it suggests a graphics card problem. Did you install drivers for it recently?
 
Nope no standby displayed, the monitor is receiving power from the graphics card which is just producing a black screen, (not a black screen as in the monitor is off if you get what I mean :))

All the drivers installed are directly from windows update, which it installed these the day I installed Vista about a week ago.
 
the-void said:
Have you tried booting into Safe mode?
Click to expand...

Void I’m not being funny but have you read my first post?

'Diagnose time I thought restarted the PC selected safe mode again the same problem a black screen, then selected safe mode with networking and again a black screen'


Yep booted into all 3 safe mode environments but still the black screen appears, looks like a repair or format is next :(
 
If you cant even get into safemode and it doesnt seem to be a hardware fault them i would guess you only option would be to reinstall vista :(
 
Yep sadly a reinstall looks certain, what’s the Vistas repair feature like? Would that keep all my docs, software & programmes etc?
 
This happened to me on the RC1 version I had installed. I originally thought it had killed my graphics card, which certainly made me panic. I think it has to do with the Power settings that Vista uses. It seems to switch things off or put less power through them if its been doing nothing for a while - something which I instantly removed after installing Home Premium.

I couldn't get back into RC1 after it happened either, I had to reinstall WinXP to get anything working again. I tried to reinstall RC1 but it didn't seem to have an option for fixing things back then.

If you can, try reinstalling Vista then turn off the power saving settings, set everything so its at maximum and doesn't reduce power.
 
I've had something similar with RC2 - after leaving the machine for a while, the screen was black when I went back to it, and it took about 3 mins worth of Ctrl+Alt+Del to get it to wake up again.
Looked to me like a problem with the power saving settings and the Ati drivers.
Changed the powwer settings and it hasn't happened since.

S.
 
Just an idea...

Have you got any USB memory sticks/devices that you dont usually have plugged in at all? My computer hung and wouldnt budge because forgot to remove a dodgy memory stick... that was when I tried to boot into vista...
 
Thanks for all the help & suggestions :)


I just chose to do a full format and reinstall, luckily I've got the Ultimate version none OEM so I can reuse my keys, I would have being stuck otherwise because id already activated.


The power saving feature I have now set to max and customised it so hopefully that won’t cause me any problems, I still cannot figure what happened :confused: guess it’s just one of those unlucky bugs...



Edit: forgot to mention Ive got XP MCE on another HDD so I just booted up in MCE and recovered all my files/bookmarks etc, thats another lifeline :p
 
Last edited:
As long as you have not changed the mobo reinstalling OEM should be fine. You might have had to phone up M$ though. ('have had to' - is it me or is that bad English?). ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom