I recently had a computer from a customer and the computer had a black screen after booting up. The black screen occurred right after the Windows XP logo with the scrolling bar. It just stayed black so you could not use it.
The first thing to do is to determine if the problem is related to software or hardware. So I tried to boot it into safe mode and it worked. So it is most likely a software problem. The possibilities are:
- Some startup programs causing a conflict
- Virus/trojan
- VGA driver not working properly
These are the possibilities I had immediately thought of that would have caused the black screen issue. So I started to test each of them.
Test For Startup Conflicts
Since I was still in safe mode, it was very easy to test if it is the startup programs. I started msconfig (type it in Run) and selected “Diagnostic Startup”. Then I restarted the computer and tried to boot normally. The black screen still came up.
Scan For Viruses
To check for virus/trojan, I took the hard drive out and connected it to a workstation dedicated to scanning viruses. It found 97 infected files and cleaned them up. After scanning, I hooked it back up and tried to boot into Windows. Still no luck.
Update VGA Driver
The next thing is to update the VGA driver. This time I booted into the “standard VGA mode” instead of “safe mode” and it worked. So it is very possible that the VGA driver is causing the problem. Since it is a NVIDIA card, I downloaded the most recent driver from their website. After re-installing the driver, it was able to boot normally and no more black screen. (Alright!)
Story Not Yet Ended
My customer took the computer home and expected it to boot up fine. Well, the black screen came back. Since they also have two other computers at home and they are all connected through the same router, I suspect that there is a virus on their network which caused the black screen problem. So I re-installed the driver for them and this time, I told them to turn off the other two computers first before connecting this one back. Now it is really working fine.
(I am still waiting for my customer to bring me the other two computers to fix.)
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