Screen Blank in Startup - Intermittent

Hi,

This is my first post. I am running Windows 7 professional in Intel I5, 4Mb RAM, Nvida GForce GTS250 video card. Occasionally after bootup, the 'Starting Windows' and Windows grahic symboy appears but then the screen goes blank when it should show the user ID's who can login.

I have run CHKDSK and tested the memory, no issues found. The event log shows a couple of critical errors but they would have occurred ony after I was logged in. I think there is a system repair option in the Windows 7 disk ( I have a OEM disk).Should I run this ?

The ony way I can get the PC back online is to turn the power off and then start the PC again....

Hoping you have a suggestion...

Update the video card driver from NVIDIA's website.

NVIDIA

Thanks TorrentG, there was a optional update waiting for the video driver which I have installed, hope it helps...

No, don't use Windows Update. That will cause even more problems. Use my link above. And only that link.

You're welcome.

Thanks again TorrentG, I check the driver installed via Windows update against the version in the NVIDA site, thete were the same. I have also dowloaded (from your link) the English driver (125,199Kb) and International driver (157,101Kb) I will leave it for a few days and if the problem persists I will install the English driver.... I don't like to make too many changes at once when trying to fix a problem...

I hear ya. Cool. Windows Update is well known to push drivers that don't work for systems. The worst of the bunch is actually the video ones.

In this case, it seems to have worked out. At other times, it's not so fortunate.

Continued success and luck to ya!

I now have a different take on Windows Update and drivers - at least with a properly configured Windows 7. Note I never have Windows automatically install any update without me seeing if it applies first, but since migrating all my systems (currently 7 of them) to Windows 7, I have not had one problem with any driver update through Windows Update (or any update for that matter). It is important to start with a properly configured Windows 7. That is, if you are using an XFX NVIDIA graphics card, for example, make sure Windows knows it is an XFX card so it does not update using NVIDIA generic drivers. Same with AMD/ATI.

If talking XP, I agree 100%. But Windows 7 is a different story. Are there exceptions? I am sure there are. But for 100s of millions of users out there, Windows Update works perfectly fine, every time.

Just to let you know, the probelm occurred again so I installed the English driver from NVIDA about 4 days ago and have not had a problem since. The system did know the video cads was a GeForce 250 card before I applied the NVIDA driver. Happy Windows 7 user.... it is so much better that XP...

Great! Glad it seems to be working. I hope it holds.

It's always bad to use Windows Update for drivers. If I didn't hide my network one from Realtek, WU would be trying to install a 2008 one on me.

That's just wrong on their part and another example of why never to use WU for drivers, ever.