Blank screen on Vista startup?

scotney1983 · 04-19-2008, 01:34 AM

Hi guys, I was hoping you might be able to help me with my vista problems.

I left my laptop on overnight. When I saw it in the morning there was a box saying the computer did not have enough memory and needed to be restarted. But when I restart it, Windows is acting up a bit.

There's no windows button or bar at the bottom of the screen, the whole thing's just completely black, except for the My Docments window that was open before I restarted. The windows button on the keyboard doesn't do anything, neither does right-clicking on the blank screen. I get a mouse cursor, but nothing else. I can ctrl-alt-del as normal, and bring up the task manager, but there's nothing that seems obviously wrong to me in there.

In safe mode I just get the same thing. When I load up normally there's the window open so I can navigate round the computer, and programs seem to run fine (I got on the firefox ok to post this by running the program in Program Files). If you minimize the window it shrinks down to a bar in the corner, if I close it, it disappears and I just get the useless blank screen. Help!

Any ideas, suggestions would be much appreciated, thanks. I'm using Vista Home Basic on a cheapo Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, 1.8GHz processor, 1 gig RAM.

solocompute · 04-21-2008, 09:31 PM

Please try this. CTRL-ALT-DEL to start the task manager. Start a new task (file-new task?) and type in c: and enter. Scroll down to control panel, go to users and add a new user with admin user rights. Then reboot and select that user. If you get the full windows desktop then there is an issue with your user profile. You can copy all of your info out of your old user profile (c:\users\--yourusername). Then I would delete the old user and user profile directories and recreate the user.

Make sure that you back up all of your user directories and email data files before deleting your old profile.

As an alternative, you can also start MSCONFIG and turn off all startup tasks, reboot and see if your desktop is visible. If that is the case then you have installed a software package that is causing an issue.

scotney1983 · 04-22-2008, 12:25 AM

Cheers solocompute, seem to have sorted it now anyway after fiddling around. Just for the record, something had been installed that was stopping explorer.exe running. After tracking this down with Hijack This, I deleted the new file in safe mode, and after that explorer launched normally.

Thanks!

04-19-2008, 01:34 AM	#1 (permalink)
scotney1983 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 2 OS: Vista Home Basic	Blank screen on Vista startup? Hi guys, I was hoping you might be able to help me with my vista problems. I left my laptop on overnight. When I saw it in the morning there was a box saying the computer did not have enough memory and needed to be restarted. But when I restart it, Windows is acting up a bit. There's no windows button or bar at the bottom of the screen, the whole thing's just completely black, except for the My Docments window that was open before I restarted. The windows button on the keyboard doesn't do anything, neither does right-clicking on the blank screen. I get a mouse cursor, but nothing else. I can ctrl-alt-del as normal, and bring up the task manager, but there's nothing that seems obviously wrong to me in there. In safe mode I just get the same thing. When I load up normally there's the window open so I can navigate round the computer, and programs seem to run fine (I got on the firefox ok to post this by running the program in Program Files). If you minimize the window it shrinks down to a bar in the corner, if I close it, it disappears and I just get the useless blank screen. Help! Any ideas, suggestions would be much appreciated, thanks. I'm using Vista Home Basic on a cheapo Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, 1.8GHz processor, 1 gig RAM.

04-21-2008, 09:31 PM	#2 (permalink)
solocompute Registered User Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 5 OS: Winxp pro xp2	Re: Blank screen on Vista startup? Please try this. CTRL-ALT-DEL to start the task manager. Start a new task (file-new task?) and type in c: and enter. Scroll down to control panel, go to users and add a new user with admin user rights. Then reboot and select that user. If you get the full windows desktop then there is an issue with your user profile. You can copy all of your info out of your old user profile (c:\users\--yourusername). Then I would delete the old user and user profile directories and recreate the user. Make sure that you back up all of your user directories and email data files before deleting your old profile. As an alternative, you can also start MSCONFIG and turn off all startup tasks, reboot and see if your desktop is visible. If that is the case then you have installed a software package that is causing an issue.

04-22-2008, 12:25 AM	#3 (permalink)
scotney1983 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 2 OS: Vista Home Basic	Re: Blank screen on Vista startup? Cheers solocompute, seem to have sorted it now anyway after fiddling around. Just for the record, something had been installed that was stopping explorer.exe running. After tracking this down with Hijack This, I deleted the new file in safe mode, and after that explorer launched normally. Thanks!