i run xp home on an acer aspire 3662. Recently i have been using a vga cable to watch videos and pictures on my TV. It wasn't working so i restarted my laptop with the vga cable still in. As a result i get the bios start up screen that says acer but this is followed by a black screen.

When i restart its the same every time, i get the bios screen without the xp loading screen following it. I am still able to hear the laptop booting up but there is nothing on the display. I can still access <f2> setup, <f8> windows advanced options menu and <f12> multiboot.

I have tinkered about but safe mode does not load past the agpCPQ.sys driver, and i wouldn't know what to do in recovery console. I have tried plugging a monitor in to see if my laptop would boot on a secondary screen but the same thing happens, a black screen follows the bios start up screen.

Anybody have any ideas? I am lost without my laptop...

Use the FN(Function Key) and the external monitor key (should be a button with a blueish monitor). See if that restores your display.

Hey got it sorted. Used a windows xp setup disc to go into recovery console. From the recovery console i was able to open a prompt and do a scan disk. The scan disk automatically repaired disk errors and my laptop started up properly.

Hope this helps others out there with black laptop screen problems

Thanks for the update markabowman

You're actually talking about Check Disk (as "scan disk" was actually the old 95\98 and ME days scanning tool )
Or specifically this command from the Xp recovery console: chkdsk c: /r

Yes that's helped many users, with many different faults. There must have been corruption (now fixed) with cross linked files with your Video driver on the harddrive, or even a fault with the harddrive itself (worse case here)
You could run a Drive Diagnostics on your hard drive to be certain all is well (possibly confirm all backups are completed as well)