Windows 7 : "No input signal" just after "Starting Windows" screen?

[Draeger]

Hi,

My main desktop PC has been working perfectly up until today. I booted it up this morning and everything was as normal, then went to shut it down and it seemed to take absolutely ages to do so. Eventually it shut down. That was earlier this morning. Went back to start it up just now and it gets to the "Starting Windows" screen and then just as you would expect the "Welcome" screen to appear, the screen goes black and the monitor shows "No input". PC fans are still on but I haven't a clue what its doing. It just hangs there like that and all you can do is turn off the power to get it to try and restart again but it just goes through the same motions.

It will boot fine into Safe Mode although for some reason my mouse and keyboard will not work in Safe Mode. Could be because they are a Logitech wireless USB mouse and kb?.

Any advice appreciated. Tried reseating graphics card and RAM and I've tried system restore to go back to a point from last night but no dice.

 

[Draeger]

Just tried that, still does the same.

 

[Draeger]

I'll have a look, think there is a spare PCI one kicking around somewhere. Weird though, I've had no previous warning signs of a failing GPU, this has just happened all of a sudden.

 

[Draeger]

Dual output card? Tried using the other output?

Possibly trying to use onboard?

Haven't tried using the other output, no. Why would the output I've used since the card was new suddenly stop working though?. The motherboard is a P5K Vanilla flavour so it has no onboard graphics unfortunately.

When it is showing no input signal, is the HDD light on your case still flickering? If it is, and you have a spare mouse, try plugging that in, boot until HDD stops filickering, then press "Windows Key, Right Arrow, Right Arrow, R" to reboot. When it reboots, start in safe mode and hopefully the new mouse should work. Then try uninstalling the graphics driver, reboot and reinstall latest driver.

Yeah, HDD light is still active so there's some read/write activity going on there which looks fairly normal as if Windows is booting up and going through the motions as usual, it's just that there's no display. I'll give that a try and see what happens.

press "Windows Key, Right Arrow, Right Arrow, R" to reboot.

Press those one after the other or all at the same time sort of thing?.

Unfortunately I had a look and don't have a spare PCI graphics card available to try to discount any issues with the 9800GTX+. However, I do have another desktop PC which my wife uses which is currently using onboard graphics and has a PCI-E slot. I'll try the 9800GTX+ in that and see if it boots up and gives a display. Cheers for the help so far guys, really annoying as this is my main PC and has been 100% reliable to date.

 

[Draeger]

Right, this is weird. Just found an old Nvidia PCI-E card which will fit. So removed the 9800GTX and slotted in the old Nvidia card. Connected the DVI up and switched on the PC. It booted to desktop no problem and Windows 7 detected it as a new card and began to install drivers for it. When it was finished it wanted to restart the PC to complete the installation. So I did and it rebooted fully expecting to get to the desktop again. But with the newly installed Nvidia card the PC has done exactly the same again - boots to "Starting Windows" and then the screen goes black and it shows "No Input".

WTH???!!!

Also, just looked inside the other desktop I thought I could test the 9800GTX in - there are no 6 pin connectors inside that I can power it with. Damn.

 

[Draeger]

As far as I know it only has dual DVI outputs on it.

 

[Draeger]

I'll give that a bash tomorrow guys, ta. Hopefully I can get into Safe Mode and remove all nvidia graphics card drivers then reinstall using 295.73 as I've been digging up info on the 296.10's and some folk are saying they can cause issues such as these with the DVI ports going to sleep and forgetting things!!.

 

[Draeger]

So have you tried the other output yet as Sp00n suggested?

Yep, made no difference. However, I have fixed the issue now. Managed to get an old PS/2 mouse and keyboard running ok in Safe Mode and went into Device Manager to the Display Adapter settings and rolled back the driver from 296.10 to 295.73. Rebooted and lo and behold, everything back to normal, working just fine. Very strange. Must have been some corruption in the drivers, maybe it just managed to happen when I did the first hard reset on the PC when it hung during shut down?. Dunno, whatever the reason I'm just glad it is back to normal now.

Cheers for the advice folks, appreciated it greatly.