vista startup prob (pic)

[P_A_N_I_C]

hiho

my dad's acer revo seems to have developed an issue when booting up. sometimes it boots ok but quite often it will look like this:

and you cannot hear that little vista startup noise, and it looks like vista just isn't loading.

he brought it over to me and saw the same fault when i attached it to my monitor (HDMI), but after one reboot it was ok. i updated vista and all the drivers for him and it seemed to be ok. however updating all that stuff has made no difference, it still does it, sometimes taking 4 reboots to load up correctly.

hmpf any ideas?

 

[theheyes]

I've never seen that little bit of wallpaper, but when I first got Vista I had a problem where the desktop would just be black and only a reboot (sometimes more than one) would fix it.

I reinstalled Vista in the end and it solved the problem.

 

[iviv]

I've never seen that little bit of wallpaper, but when I first got Vista I had a problem where the desktop would just be black and only a reboot (sometimes more than one) would fix it.

I reinstalled Vista in the end and it solved the problem.

Another not helpful post, I'm running vista64 and am getting the blank desktops still occasionally. Don't want to format, got too much stuff to backup, and 7 will be out soon enough anyway.

 

[blastman]

You havn't really said how far it gets in the boot process.

is it a real problem or is it just that the explorer process hasn't fired up yet?

Have you tried opening the task manager and starting a new explorer task??

I have this somethings on a few of my machines and opening the process always brings my desktop back.

If it's a real OS issue, then I'd suggest doing a repair install.

Hope it helps.

 

[Raumarik]

That looks like awfully "error popup window" sized bit of wallpaper, sounds driver related to me - is there absolutely nothing in the event logs? I'd be tempted to disable devices or remove them from the PC to see if it booted up more reliably.

 

[ChileanLlama]

Can you take a look in MSCONFIG, under the Boot tab. Is "No GUI Boot" ticked?

This replaces the standard progress loading bar in Vista with a wallpaper type background during the boot process.

 

[theheyes]

Another not helpful post, I'm running vista64 and am getting the blank desktops still occasionally. Don't want to format, got too much stuff to backup, and 7 will be out soon enough anyway.

Eh? Are you saying I regularly make unhelpful posts or something? Because I don't think that's true. I told the OP I had seen a similar issue, that I never got to the bottom of it and what eventually fixed it for me. At the risk of being "not helpful" again if your computer is acting quirky it sounds like you might want to back up your stuff anyway.

Often a format is the answer to a lot of problems, however much it might be hitting a nail with a sledgehammer. I've seen the "black screen" problem come up a number of times on this forum and to my knowledge nobody seems to have come up with a definitive answer.