Desktop

Ask something
Discussion Locked

XP splash screen then black (no desktop)

0 helpful
14 replies

by bapco

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I have a laptop running Win xp. It has been working great for a few months. Last night I noticed my internet conncetion was not authenicating, so I rebooted. I got the normal WinXP splash screen, then it clears this and will on a normal bootup show the mouse cursoer, then the desktop is supposed to appear. It does not,

I get a black screen and I can't see anything. I can, however get into safe mode. I don't see anything in the event logs....

The last thing I loaded was PC Anywhere 9.2 (I tried to uninstall, but can't inside safe mode)

Help please....

Phillip

14 replies

by sgt_shultz

well, gee, try pulling the NIC? If it has worked OK thru a couple of reboots and installed pcAnywhere, I wouldn't suspect that, unless you have it recently had configured it to autostart pcanywhere host and that is now barfing...
but if truly all was well until 'crash' of internet, then i worry about the NIC and I worry about viruses, backdoors, scan with latest virus defs in safe mode.
good luck

by craigmjackson

Phillip, i have your solution. I ran into this problem about a week ago installing PCAnywhere for XP. Symantec has a patch to address this problem. You need to uninstall PCAnywhere, download the patch, Install PCAnywhere. **IMPORTANT** when PCAnywhere wants to reboot the system, make sure you boot into safe mode THE FIRST TIME IT REBOOTS. Then you can apply the patch in safe mode (should be an EXE file) and then reboot into normal mode, and the video should respond fine.
I was on the phone with dell looking for a Video BIOS update or some type of fix, it was just a coincidence that i discovered the flaw was with PCAnywhere. I just couldn't imagine that a Remote Access application could mess up the video, but it does get involved in the video when it does its desktop sharing. I hope this helps, I don't blame you for being frustrated about this one.

Craig Jackson
craig@jacksoncomputing.us

by schefer

Your problem is definitely with PC-Anywhere. Install the patch from Symantec and it will go away. Do just like answer 2 says. This problem has been around for a while but normally it surfaces when you try to update your video drivers and have PC-Anywhere installed on the system. PC-Anywhere grabs the video drivers when it starts and puts a lock on them. XP checks your video mode and capabilities on startup if PC-Anywhere has already started then that process cannot happen and you get the black screen of death.

If you can't get the patch right away, then you can probably stop PC anywhere in safe mode by going into control panel and then services. Find the PC Anywhere service and disable it.

You should then be able to restart your system in normal mode. I don't have a XP system available for testing at the moment so I can't verify that this will work but it works in W2K.

This discussion is closed to new replies.