Black Screen During Boot XP & 2000

[SecretSamurai]

A few years ago, my P3 733/GeForce 256 system running Windows XP stopped booting up. I would see the logo screen, the bar would go almost all the way across, then the screen would go black and the monitor went into standby mode. Attempts to repair my installation, and even clean installs didn't work. The RAM is fine, the video card appears to be fine... I can't find any hardware problems.

Every now and then I have another go at getting the system working again. Last time I tried, Windows 98 worked fine. This time, after installing Windows 98, I couldn't change any of the display settings - it was stuck in 16 color, 640x480 mode, even though I had installed the graphics card and monitor drivers. It ignored any attempt to start in safe mode. So I decided to try Windows 2000, and I have exactly the same problem as I did with Windows XP!

Once again I'm at a loss. I can't seem to find anyone who has this exact same problem, or any ideas on how to fix it.

 

[SecretSamurai]

One more thing... pressing or holding the power button when this happens and the monitor goes into standby, has no affect! I have to turn the power off at the wall socket.

 

[rgeist554]

Maybe try using the Windows 98 disk to completely wipe the drive and start clean?

 

[SecretSamurai]

I've installed on brand new clean drives without any luck.

 

[arkadi]

Well it hard to pinpoint the problem via forum, you should try to replace the VGA card, I am sure you can find an old working card some ware, hmm and reset the bios just in case, (I am sure you did that by now) p.s how come you sure that you VGA is fine? and do me a favor don’t install 98