Vista - Vista Black screen, only mouse at startup. Need to un/reinstall graphics driver

I've been searching the web for a solution for a while now, and although it seems to be a somewhat common problem none of the solutions work for me.

So basically I was installing new grahpics drivers from the nvidia homepage, when the screen suddenly makes like a flicker thingy and then switches to a black screen with a flashing white underscore.

No problems I think and reboot. But since then all I get when rebooting is a black screen with only the mouse pointer active. No keyboard commands work(although the sleep button works) so I can't bring up any kind of useful window which could take me to the device manager or something that'd allow me to fix my drivers.

Also I guess its worth noting that I have two users, but the black screen comes up before I get to chose which one to log in with.

I've tried the "fix bios settings"-solution(didnt need fixing), "fix registry"-solution(didnt need fixing) and pressing f8 and trying all different kinds of boot options and keyboard commands. No solutions have given me any kind of progress.

Also I've loaded up the Vista recovery disc.
Startup Repair says everything is fine,
I have no restore points,
I cannot access device manager from Command Prompt ( is there a way?)



So in short:
Black screen, active mouse pointer. Need a way to access device manager from recovery disk to fix my grahpics driver.
or another way to fix the black screen problem.

Hi,

You could try going into safe mode ( tap F8 after POST and before Windows starts loading).

In safe mode, type msconfig into the start search box, and click it when it pops up.

Dot Selective startup and tick System services. Click the Boot tab and tick Base video. Apply and ok.





You should then restart into windows using the onboard graphics card.

Hope it helps

SIW2

Maybe it wasnt clear, but I cannot enter safe mode.
I've tried every possible mode using f8 and I still get the black screen with only the mouse active.
Keyboard commands like ctrl-shift-esc, ctrl-alt-delete do not work either.

I have EXACTLY the same problem, Mneh. But in my case it didn't happen installing graphic drivers, it happened after chkdsk "fixed" some weird problems in the filesystem... in any case, did you get a solution?

Thank you very much.

Sorry, my solution was to copy my important files to another disk and reinstall windows.

I copied the files using the command prompt in the repair mode(using the windows vista cd). I opened notedpad by simply writing notepad...

...And then clicking file-> open let me browse to the stuff I wanted to save, ctrl-c ctrl-v did the rest.

heh, ok, it's a pity that Repair the installation like in XP...

Probably some video files were corrupted :/

Thanks for your reply anyway

I posted on another forum. It fixed my black screen. Maybe it will work
for you too.

http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/...&tf=0&pageid=3


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Hi,

I just now solved this problem by fluke.

I too had the black screen even when booting up in safe mode.

The problem went away when I shutdown, then inserted a USB flash drive
into an available USB port, then booted back up in normal mode.

I got the desktop back! No more black screen!

Hope this helps.

-Randy


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