Member Avatar for scubagal123

I have an old HP Pavilion running Windows XP Home that started showing me a blank screen suddenly. I've tried a few things.

When I power it on via the power button, the initial display allows me to F1 into settings. It also allows me to start Windows in Recovery Mode from where I can see what is on the C:\ drive as well what is within the directories on the C:\ drive. I had a couple of partitions on the machine and when I chdir to those, I hear a whirring sound althought am not able to look into those.

I also connected the ethernet cable to the machine and checked my DHCP clients table. That machine does not appear in the list of connected machines.

I'm not sure what I could try next at home. Would greatly appreciate any suggestions / advise.

Thanks.

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Dani AI

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— seeing BIOS/F1 and a recovery/safe environment but getting a black screen once Windows finishes loading narrows the fault to a Windows-level component (video driver, shell/startup item) or to display hardware that changes state once the OS hands off control. ’s pointer toward a rogue driver is a useful starting hypothesis. The following steps show a simple way to isolate driver/software causes from hardware.

Boot-time isolation (software-first)

  • Use the F8 menu: try "Safe Mode", "Safe Mode with Networking", and "Last Known Good Configuration". If the desktop appears in Safe Mode, the problem is most likely a driver or startup program.
  • In Safe Mode open Device Manager -> Display adapters -> Roll Back Driver (if available) or Uninstall the display driver, then reboot so Windows uses the default VGA driver.
  • Run System Restore to a point before the problem, or use msconfig to disable non-Microsoft services and all startup items, then reboot.
  • At the black-screen stage try Ctrl+Alt+Del → Task Manager → File → New Task and run explorer.exe. If the desktop appears, the issue is explorer/startup related.

Hardware checks (if software steps fail)

  • Attach an external monitor (VGA/DVI) if available. If the external monitor shows the desktop but the AIO panel stays black, suspect the internal panel, inverter/backlight, or the panel cable. If both are blank, suspect GPU/motherboard or a deeper driver/hardware mismatch.
  • Shine a bright light at the screen at an angle during the black period; a faint image indicates backlight failure.
  • Reseat RAM sticks (power off and unplug before opening the case) and try one stick at a time.
  • Boot from a USB or live CD environment to see whether the display works outside of Windows.

Data safety and next steps

  • Use the recovery environment to copy important files to an external drive before performing fixes. If Safe Mode recovery works, install the correct XP video driver from HP support for the Pavilion a000. If none of the above restores normal boot, the fault is more likely hardware and professional service will be required; include model number and which isolation tests were tried when seeking repair.

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Member Avatar for BigPaw

I cant find any consistent spec's for this. Is it a laptop, a desktop, or an All-in-one? Can you give us a link to anything about it, please?

Does it show you a blank screen every time, or can you actually use it normally sometimes? At what point would there be a blank screen? Does it happen when it starts booting, or while you're using Windows?

Member Avatar for scubagal123

It's an HP all in one desktop. It shows a blank screen everytime after it gets past the Starting Windows XP Home screen. If I divert to Windows in Recovery Mode, I can do that and browse the c:\ drive. But then if I exit out and it goes into the normal loading of windows, it immediately brings up a blank screen.

Member Avatar for BigPaw

This appears to be a problem with a rogue driver. Please follow these suggestions and then let us know how you get on. :)

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