A friend of mine has a problem with his PC.
It posts ok, and the black Windows XP screen comes up with the little coloured bar moving from left to right. A few seconds later, just at the point you would expect it to go to the Welcome/user logon screen, the monitor screen goes black. Around 30 seconds later, the hard disk activity light goes out, although the PC is still switched on and the fans are turning.
The keyboard Num Lock button goes out to. The only thing that you can do is hit the reset switch on the front of the case.
Now, I had a look around the web and at first thought it may have been the case, as some have suggested, that either his graphics card was at fault or somehow, his screen resolution had been changed and it needed dropping down so the monitor could cope.
But that doesnt seem to be the case as the monitor power light stays lit and green and doesnt change to orange/standby mode as a lot of people who have found this is the problem have mentioned.
I tried removing and re-seating all his components. We scanned the PC using tools from a BART disc for viruses and malware. All came up clean.
When you try and boot to safe mode, it goes through the motions and the first page of text in black and white shows but then it just sits there, never getting into safe mode. Tried last known good config as well, it does the same as booting normally.
Ive used half a dozen different hard drive diagnostic tools on it and they all appear to come up clean as well. Through the tools on the BART disc, we can see his files are all there in their folders but I just cant figure out what the problem is?.
There seem to be a lot of people who have had this problem, but varying degrees of answers, most of which relate to the graphics possibly being a problem. I dont think it is that, although I may be wrong.
If anyone has any idea of what to try next, then please chuck any suggestions my way as trying to solve this is driving me up the wall!!!.
It posts ok, and the black Windows XP screen comes up with the little coloured bar moving from left to right. A few seconds later, just at the point you would expect it to go to the Welcome/user logon screen, the monitor screen goes black. Around 30 seconds later, the hard disk activity light goes out, although the PC is still switched on and the fans are turning.
The keyboard Num Lock button goes out to. The only thing that you can do is hit the reset switch on the front of the case.
Now, I had a look around the web and at first thought it may have been the case, as some have suggested, that either his graphics card was at fault or somehow, his screen resolution had been changed and it needed dropping down so the monitor could cope.
But that doesnt seem to be the case as the monitor power light stays lit and green and doesnt change to orange/standby mode as a lot of people who have found this is the problem have mentioned.
I tried removing and re-seating all his components. We scanned the PC using tools from a BART disc for viruses and malware. All came up clean.
When you try and boot to safe mode, it goes through the motions and the first page of text in black and white shows but then it just sits there, never getting into safe mode. Tried last known good config as well, it does the same as booting normally.
Ive used half a dozen different hard drive diagnostic tools on it and they all appear to come up clean as well. Through the tools on the BART disc, we can see his files are all there in their folders but I just cant figure out what the problem is?.
There seem to be a lot of people who have had this problem, but varying degrees of answers, most of which relate to the graphics possibly being a problem. I dont think it is that, although I may be wrong.
If anyone has any idea of what to try next, then please chuck any suggestions my way as trying to solve this is driving me up the wall!!!.

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