I put my Inspiron 400 Zino to bed with a Windows Update, and it woke up the next morning without its login screen. Worse, when I stick in my Windows Home Server Rescue disc, the drive whirs for a bit before it hangs with a blinking cursor. I can get to the BIOS and boot screens, and everything looks fine there. It loads the Windows installation disk, and I could always do a complete reinstall, but would rather not for obvious reasons.
I have tried booting off the Windows disc and then trying to load setup from the rescue partition, which appears to be intact. No dice.
No help so far from the usual forums, so before I reinstall, I thought I'd ask here if anyone is encountering similar problems. I SUSPECT it may be a corrupt graphics driver, but don't know where to take it from there. Any ideas, fellow Zinophiles?
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Black screen with mouse pointer at log in?
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I believe Dell Zino's all came with ATI drivers and I'm going to 100% suspect that this is a graphics driver problem. The other day after windows update my computer was prompting me to upgrade CCC and I refused. I've been burned way too many times by ATI's software with my HTPC.
What I do when this happens is get into safe mode and either A. uninstall the graphics driver or B. do a system restore
I would also encourage troubleshooting this on a monitor versus your TV if it's hooked up to your TV.
What I do when this happens is get into safe mode and either A. uninstall the graphics driver or B. do a system restore
I would also encourage troubleshooting this on a monitor versus your TV if it's hooked up to your TV.
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Thanks, Frankspin -- I've actually been using it on a monitor, but I've never tried switching to my TV. I'll see if that gives me an image. So far, even safe mode gives me a blank screen -- and I can't get to the place on the windows recovery disk that allows me to restore. So... off to the TV tomorrow!
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