blank display

lau1247

I originally had windows xp home on my laptop but i format the hard drive and install the new windows xp pro I just bought. Windows couldn't find the driver for the graphic card in its natural database during installation. Therefore I skipped it and it installed the very basic one.

I found the graphic card driver yesterday but it won't install. thinking that if I disable the driver, it will ask me to install a driver before it start into windows (like windows 98) but instead it goes blank. when the laptop start, I can still hear the background which means windows has started but I cannot see anything. Help!!

I disabled the driver through > right click on desktop> properties> setting tab> advance> adapter> properties> disable driver

What I realise was that there's no display section in device manager (before I disabled it ). I've tried to do system restore, remote desktop connection (comes out blank also), safe mode, step by step trying to undo using the step i took to disable but so far nothing worked.

Will I need to replace the laptop hard drive with a new one and do another fresh install?

any suggestion to a solution??

crowej

just do a fresh install should solve the problem, format the drive if you can.

can you see the xp startup screen while its booting?

lau1247

yes i can see the motherboard startup and then the XP screen (Where the blue bits flow across)..

It is after then it goes black.. it's to do with the driver for the display.. I just can't find a way to reactivate it without being able to see..

I've tried safe mode but still didn't work..

Is there anyway of removing the driver completely? or edit something from dos at startup?

crowej

does safe mode not allow you to boot with out the display
driver ?

lau1247

i thought it would but apparantly it wouldn't.. still black..

crowej

try a repair install of windows

lau1247

how do i do that?

crowej

run through the setup as if you were going to install windows

then at the last step it will detect the previous windows install and then select the repair option

lau1247

that's fairly hard without navigation.. unless it's just hitting enter again and again?

is there a way of fresh format windows directly.. then I can just put in the installation cd?? that way the screen should be back.. what do you think?

crowej

i assueme you have your cdrom set as the first boot device in the bios.

you should see a message

press any key to .....

which will bring you into the setup then its pretty much enter enter enter.

its very intuitive

lau1247

so it actually doesn't go into windows? cool I'll give that a try.. hope it work.. I'll get back to you

crowej

no it doesnt go into windows just straight into the setup