Black Screen On Boot

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Hi! As the thread title suggests, I'm having some problems with my computer that I suspect may be related to my graphics card. Earlier this evening, I walked into my room and found that my computer had frozen while I was AFK in a game. I noticed strange greenish lines that were running through the screen, and I wondered if those could be related to the graphics problems I'd been having in the same game, (shapes would become distorted, triangulation of shapes would occur, etc). As with most problems though, I figured that I could simply restart my computer and everything would be back to normal. However, that was not the case. Upon booting, there was no Windows XP start up screen, no boot selection screen, nothing. It was just a black screen. Once again, i tried rebooting and attempted to boot from safemode (memorized boot keys). And again, nothing happened, just another black screen. Finally, I took out my OS CD and attempted to boot from that. Still nothing happened. All of these things led me to believe that potentially my graphics card was dead. I'm not an extremely computer savvy person though, so any simple answers/solutions to this problem would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Mauga
 
Can you tell us what your computer specs are? Things like make and model? The first thing to do is to try another video card? Would you be able to do this?
 
Specs:

System: Dell XPS M1710
Processor: Intel Core Duo T2600 (2.16 GHz)
Memory: 2GB @ 667MHz - 2 DIMM Slots (2 x 1GB) (Max Ram 4GB)
Hard Drive: 100GB capacity at a speed of 7200 RPM
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX with 512MB DDR memory
Screen: WUXGA Truelife (1920 x 1200)
Optical Drive: 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW/+R) with Dual-Layer
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Wireless Card: Intel 3945 (802.11b/g)
Battery: 9-cell lithium ion recharegable battery
Ports / Slots: 5-in-1 Memory Card Reader, DVI-D, VGA video output, S-Video, IEEE 1394 (Firewire), 6 USB 2.0, Express Card slot, Modem, Ethernet/LAN, Microphone in, Headphone out

and it probably wont be possible to swap a graphics card unless i just go out and buy a new one since I don't really have any just lying about the house.
 
Similar if not exact same problem...

I am having almost the same if not exactly the same problem. Slightly different for me though, as I was playing Guild Wars in Vista Ultimate when the lock happened. I too am experiencing the green lines, though generally they are limited to the bios loading screen and the windows loading screen (i.e., the screen with the repeating progress bar).

Initially I was not able to access my computer period, except for occasional successes with logging into safe mode. I thought it may be a problem with the OS, so i tried reverting to XP, which I am currently using. This did not help whatsoever, and now I have also noticed that many of the letters used for dos (i.e., the big blocky ones used when installing xp, and also for various messages from the bios) have weird lines after them.

Anyway, after much ado, I realized that it was my graphics card. I'm still not sure if it requires a replacement or what, but I have not found any driver yet that makes it work. As of now it must remain disabled for me to run this pc without requiring safe mode.

Specs:

System: Dell Inspiron E1705
Processor: Intel Core Duo T2400 (1.83 GHz)
Memory: 2GB @ 667MHz (2 x 1GB)
HDD: 100 GB @ 5400 RPM
Graphics Card: GeForce Go 7900 GTX with 512MB DDR memory*
Current OS: Win XP Home

*Same as Mauga.....can't really afford a replacement, as my warranty expired ~8 mo's ago, not to mention I have no idea how to install it.
 
Do you two realize that you have the exact video cards? TRY ANOTHER VIDEO CARD! Hear me? Borrow one, take the system to a computer shop and have them try another video card. Get the idea now???
 
I will try to make myself clear.

My computer is a laptop. As in if I want to swap the video card I would have to go on ebay, find a compatible card with my system, figure out exactly how to take apart my system and install it, and pray it works.

On the shop side, the last time I had them work on my system for something like this (and it was remarkably a problem in the same genre of graphics cards, but not the same symptoms), it cost me ~$500, which I currently do not have.

I do not mean to sound frustrated if I do. But I have been struggling with this for the past 3 days or so.

I hope this information helps.

Cheers,

Night
 
With laptops your only choice is to try updating or reloading the video driver. There is no video card in most laptops (Alienware laptops do have video cards). Go to Dell support and look up your laptops model, then download and install the video driver. This goes for both you and Mauga
 
Thank you for the input, and as a matter of fact, I know that my laptop can be upgraded, as I had that done last september from a geforce go 7900 gs to a 7900 gtx As for the driver, I have already tried the latest stable drivers from dell, the latest performance drivers from dell, as well as the latest beta drivers from dell in addition to many other drivers from LaptopVideo2Go.com, and other sites.

As of this point, I am looking into purchasing one off ebay, as that is the most cost-friendly option I have at this point (as opposed to going to a repair shop or buying a new laptop) as I have essentially eliminated all other possible fixes. I did have at one point this afternoon a time when I could enable the graphics card, but that time of bliss soon ended.

Better luck to you, Mauga.

Night
 
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