Generic display drivers causing black screen on startup

[kisk]

Working on a HP Touchsmart Tx2 with Vista Business SP2 x64.

Client had tried to reinstall the OS onto the system and could only get into Windows via safemode. In normal mode, the system simply goes black right before the welcome screen and all activity halts. No bluescreen, no hdd activity.

In safe mode, I removed all the video drivers and was able to get into normal mode just fine and install the *correct* drivers. System was fine (getting into windows at least) through multiple reboots, but I then found the client had deleted/changed a bunch of non-related system files and there were errors throwing all over the place. SFC couldn't recover anything, Win Update wouldn't run, multiple services wouldn't start. Sooo... I decided just to do a full reinstall since there's no telling what other mess they created. Since the reinstall, I am getting the same black screen right before the welcome screen loads on both safe and normal mode.

I booted up with logging enabled (ntbtlog.txt) and the last driver to load is vgapnp.sys, which makes sense, but I have no way of getting into windows to install the correct drivers to fix the issue.

To add, these Tx2's run HOT and I've seen quite a few posts about GPU issues, however the system seemed to get into windows just fine before I reinstalled the OS, granted the other issues. I wanted to rule out everything else before I do a reball on the chip. Maybe an updated version of the generic drivers doesn't play well with this touchscreen system? The original installation was SP1, however I only have a SP2 disk. Any ideas?


Edit: Linux and MiniXP both work fine.

 

[tek9]

Which "safe mode" are you trying? Did you try the low resolution mode?

 

[Tech bud]

Could you boot to a cd and install the driver through a bootable OS?

 

[Markverhyden]

The touchsmarts are a real PITA. Notorious for logicboard problems due to heat.

Just because it run some *nix or a Windoze PE fine does not mean they have a software problem. I've had plenty of machines over the years that will not load or run Windoze but *nix worked fine. Latest was my neighbor across the street, 5 weeks ago. Her 3 year old HP laptop went belly up so I loaded Zorin. But she could not handle the difference so I had her get the W7 recovery disks and we ran a restore from disk. Still had problems.

 

[kisk]

Which "safe mode" are you trying? Did you try the low resolution mode?

Yes, tried both. Same result.

Could you boot to a cd and install the driver through a bootable OS?

Possible, however I'm not sure how to do that exactly. I've found the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool, but it looks like this only works with images (.wim, .vhd, .vhdx, etc). If I could find something that could inject/install a driver on an offline system that would be great -- or instructions on how to do it manually.

The touchsmarts are a real PITA. Notorious for logicboard problems due to heat.

Just because it run some *nix or a Windoze PE fine does not mean they have a software problem. I've had plenty of machines over the years that will not load or run Windoze but *nix worked fine. Latest was my neighbor across the street, 5 weeks ago. Her 3 year old HP laptop went belly up so I loaded Zorin. But she could not handle the difference so I had her get the W7 recovery disks and we ran a restore from disk. Still had problems.

Client said the system was running fine before he tried to initially reinstall the OS. He didn't, however, use the recovery partition, which would have been ideal in this situation. He used an oem disk. He deleted the recovery partition. I tried to recover it but its toast.

 

[NYJimbo]

Unless I missed it can you boot normal and hook up an external screen so you can work on it ?

 

[BrentfromZulu]

Drivers / BIOS out of date? If you are using stock drivers, there might be an important update needed for the system...

 

[kisk]

Unless I missed it can you boot normal and hook up an external screen so you can work on it ?

Nope, once it black-screens it locks up. No bluescreen, no nothing. HDD activity LED stops as well. No response from kb commands either.

Drivers / BIOS out of date? If you are using stock drivers, there might be an important update needed for the system...

Problem is I never get a chance to install ANY drivers -- this is a fresh OS install so windows uses the generic vga drivers.


I suppose I will try to create an image from my oem disk and slipstream the drivers with Windows AIK and see what happens. If that doesn't help I'm going to reball the chip just to rule that out. Will update outcome.

 

[NYJimbo]

For the hell of it, boot memtest86+ on dvd or USB and let it run for half an hour or swap out ram for known-good and try some stuff.

 

[kisk]

For the hell of it, boot memtest86+ on dvd or USB and let it run for half an hour or swap out ram for known-good and try some stuff.

Sorry, forgot to list that, each stick and slot cleared a few passes.

 

[Tech bud]

You could get Hirens boot cd and boot to the mini windows xp desktop. Then in mini Windows xp, you install the driver into the computer. Just when it asks which location to install the driver, choose inside the C:/windows/windows32 or were over they are to be stored.

 

[kisk]

You could get Hirens boot cd and boot to the mini windows xp desktop. Then in mini Windows xp, you install the driver into the computer. Just when it asks which location to install the driver, choose inside the C:/windows/windows32 or were over they are to be stored.

Unfortunately its a little more complicated to install a driver into an offline system than that. The offline registry would be missing the entries it needs to know the new driver to load and would simply use the default failing driver. Once Windows loads it *may* find the new driver automatically and switch but I can't even get that far in this situation. On top of that, most driver installers don't ask where you want to install the drivers. If they do, its because there is supporting software to manage the device. The drivers are almost always installed where they need to go (system32, etc) even if you choose a different directory for the supporting software.

I haven't done the research yet on how to manually (REAL manually in this case) install drivers with all the registry entries and all. That will be the next step if what I'm working on now doesn't work.

Still working on slipstreaming the drivers into a new vista install disk. Will update when I test.

 

[kisk]

For the sake of concluding this thread:

It did turn out to be GPU failure. I ended up reballing the chip with leaded solder balls and now everything runs fine. This machine should have a good bit of life left now. These suckers run HOT!!

Anyway, thanks to everybody for their help and suggestions!