Ressurecting My Dead Windows!

mkeller · 08-26-2009, 03:17 PM

A while back I made the idiotic mistake of disabling my graphics card (a Radeon 9600) in Windows XP, which gave me a blank screen, and hence, an unusable OS. Following the advice of folk on here, I tried repairing my Windows installation, but once the text-mode part of the repair finished, I got a blank screen again. I have a dual-boot on that PC with Linux Mint, so for the past months, I've just been using Linux.

But I'd like to get my Windows back again. One way to fix it would be to open the files that make up the Windows registry in Linux, and edit them to re-enable the graphics card. But I'm not sure exactly what to do to do that - so another approach might be better. Something else I thought of is to remove the graphics card and replace it with another one, and then try the repair again. Windows (I hope) would recognize that there's another graphics card in use, and set things up for it to be used, allowing me to finish the repair process. And then I'd be able to reinstall the original card.

Would either of those ideas work? Is there something else I should do instead? Let me know what you think, and thanks!

**tosh9i** · 08-26-2009, 03:42 PM

replacing the graphics card sounds like it would work

**emosun** · 08-26-2009, 09:49 PM

Have you tried just booting in safe mode? Or just taking the gpu out , boot the machine fully , then turn it off and reinstalling the gpu?

If nothing works then just install windows on another drive and setup your old drive as a slave and get all your files you want off it and simply reinstall windows.

08-26-2009, 03:17 PM	#1 (permalink)
mkeller Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 19 OS: Windows XP, Vista, Linux Mint	Ressurecting My Dead Windows! A while back I made the idiotic mistake of disabling my graphics card (a Radeon 9600) in Windows XP, which gave me a blank screen, and hence, an unusable OS. Following the advice of folk on here, I tried repairing my Windows installation, but once the text-mode part of the repair finished, I got a blank screen again. I have a dual-boot on that PC with Linux Mint, so for the past months, I've just been using Linux. But I'd like to get my Windows back again. One way to fix it would be to open the files that make up the Windows registry in Linux, and edit them to re-enable the graphics card. But I'm not sure exactly what to do to do that - so another approach might be better. Something else I thought of is to remove the graphics card and replace it with another one, and then try the repair again. Windows (I hope) would recognize that there's another graphics card in use, and set things up for it to be used, allowing me to finish the repair process. And then I'd be able to reinstall the original card. Would either of those ideas work? Is there something else I should do instead? Let me know what you think, and thanks!

08-26-2009, 03:42 PM	#2 (permalink)
tosh9i TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 3,837 OS: Windows XP	Re: Ressurecting My Dead Windows! replacing the graphics card sounds like it would work __________________ Tosh Last edited by tosh9i; 08-26-2009 at 03:50 PM.

08-26-2009, 09:49 PM	#3 (permalink)
emosun Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: usa Posts: 7,034 OS: xp pro sp2 My System	Re: Ressurecting My Dead Windows! Have you tried just booting in safe mode? Or just taking the gpu out , boot the machine fully , then turn it off and reinstalling the gpu? If nothing works then just install windows on another drive and setup your old drive as a slave and get all your files you want off it and simply reinstall windows. __________________ Gpu Benchmarks Cpu-Z Power supply information and selection Gpu-Z Video card quick list