Troubleshooting Video Problems

If your screen stays black or is skewed after a restart, either the video device is not resetting correctly during the restart or the video is sharing an IRQ.

Turn the power off and restart. If the video works, you probably need to turn the power off each time you restart Windows 2000. This problem is related to the video and system-BIOS.

If the video is still not working properly after shutting the power down and restarting, check for IRQ and memory conflicts with other cards on your system.

If you have installed a new video driver, or used the Display option in Control Panel to change the display type, you might have created an incompatibility between the driver and the video device. If you get a black screen instead of the logon message when you restart Windows 2000 this is likely the case.

Turn off your computer or use the reset button to restart your computer. In safe mode, select the Last Known Good Configuration option from the Windows 2000 Advanced Options menu. For more information about troubleshooting problems using safe mode, see "Startup Process" in this book.

Another option is to start your computer in safe mode and select Enable VGA mode from the Windows 2000 Advanced Options menu. Windows 2000 uses the standard VGA driver to start up. You can then use the Display option to reconfigure your video device.

Note

Windows 2000 requires new video and printer drivers. Microsoft® Windows NT® version 3.51 and Microsoft® Windows NT® version 4.0 drivers for these devices do not work correctly when you are running Windows 2000.

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