Screen Blackouts...Help Needed!

[callahan31]

Recently, my computer screen has been going black during both startup and while in use. The tower remains on, but "freezes" up so that the power button doesn't react - forcinging me to turn the tower off from the switch in the back. Sometimes, a single restart will get my screen working again. However, there are many times that I must restart the computer 5 or 6 times to get it to work again.

The machine and monitor are only a couple of years old and get light-to-moderate use (mostly internet and some gaming). I have Win98.

Can anyone please help me figure out what has caused this to start happening???

Thanks in advance,
RC

[Rueful Rogue]

Sounds to me like you may have a monitor going out, however, there could be other "video" problems which may look this way.

The first thing I would do is to check to be sure you have all the latest updates to Win98 and any driver updates. Go to: Click on the "Scan for Updates" link and Microsoft will scan your computer and operating system. When it's done, you'll see three catagories on the left sidebar: "Critical Updates", "Windows 98", and "Drivers". If there are any numbers in parenthesis next to any of these titles, then there are updates available. Click on them to see the details and select the ones you need/want. You should download ALL CRITICALS, ALL DRIVERS, and then only the Win98 stuff that pertains to how you use your PC. You may have to reboot when finished, or perhaps after a single download. You'll be told.

After downloading the updates, I'd look to see if the problem is fixed. If not then I would go to the Win98 support site at: . Use the search engine there to look for articles pertaining to your problem. Type in things like "video loss", "black screen", etc. Each may produce different articles.

Good Luck!