XP Repair Install fails after mistakenly disabling display device

Hi... my first post here... it's been one of those days

In trying to solve a problem with the display driver, thoughtlessly disabled the default reset VGA driver (or whatever it's called, can't remember). So of course, after a reboot, Windows hangs on a black screen. Same in Safe Mode, too.

So instead of doing the sensible thing and going back to the last known good configuration, I attempted a repair install... several times. Then I tried going back to the last known good configuration... now I get a screen, "Setup is being restarted" which never goes away. The HD is busily active for a while & initially loads stuff off the install CD; then works away for a while longer & stops. Pressing [Esc] causes some more HD activity and then that stops & nothing I do causes more activity but the system is not locked up. In Safe Mode, it hangs after loading mup.sys

I suspect that on the screen I ought to be seeing, there's a dialog waiting for me to input something like maybe the License Key or something... I'd really like to avoid having to wipe it all out & start over, but I'm all out of ideas

Anybody know how I can re-activate the default display driver?

TIA

See if you can edit c:\boot.ini (probably read-only) with notepad or another ASCII editor from a util-disk, than can WRITE on NTFS
If you still use FAT32, you could use the built-in Edit from a W98SE boot-floppy (www.bootdisk.com)

Remove the read-only attribute.
Then add (one blank space)/basevideo after the /fastdetect parameter in boot.ini
That forces VGA to come on.

Thanks for the prompt response!

Unfortunately this did not help

I did already try "Enable VGA Mode" from the boot options which I believe will do the same thing. Going in with ERD 2002 I was able to check the status of the vgasave driver whose startup type is "system". So somewhere in my frantic flailing around yesterday (shoulda stayed in bed), I did manage to enable it. So I've done something else that is preventing the completion of the repair install. I didn't think of using ERD to enable the driver yesterday, unfortunately. It was a comedy of errors, painting myself ever tighter into the corner

So the current state of things is:

XP Pro SP2 failed repair install.

Booting normally gets to a (PE) screen in VGA mode with the phrase:

"Setup is being restarted.............."

...which does not change. There's a lot of hard disk activity, the XP CD (slipstreamed SP2) is accessed, data is transferred for a short while, then more hard disk activity. Finally things quiet down and the only thing that does anthing else is hitting [Esc] which produces another 20 seconds or so of HD activity. Then nothing...

Attempting to boot into Safe Mode yields a similar scenario except it stops on the initial boot options screen after the progress bar completes but without even displaying the drivers being loaded although there is disk activity for 30 seconds or so.

So next I'm gonna run chkdsk from the recovery console as I have done the hard reset thing a number of times...

In the meantime if anyone has any ideas... TIA.