Black Screen on Windows 2000 Boot Up

[Boldgamer]

Hello. I am having a problem with a PC I am working on for a friend of my sisters. It is an old

Gateway E-1400
PIII processor
16MB TNT2 PCI Graphics card
256MB RAM
15GB HDD

I know this is an old PC but it was given to him for use in his non-profit organization. Most of the expenses for the children he works with come out of his pocket so buying a new pc right now is out of the question.

When I received it I installed Windows 2000. The problem I am having is that when I try to start Windows 2000 up I get to the Windows 2000 Professional splash screen and when the loading bar reaches the end the monitor goes to sleep. The screen stays black. I am able to boot in safe mode and VGA mode and have no problems. I disabled the integrated Intel graphics in safe mode and still no luck. I uninstall the nVidia drivers in safe mode and have install multiple nVidia drivers from 45.xx to the last supported drivers for this card (71.xx) and still no success. When I do uninstall the drivers and restart and boot normally everything works. Then the OS automatically installs the drivers it has and when I restart I am back where I started. Also, something that seemed strange to me is that when I start the computer up the first screen I see says:

nVidia TNT2 Pro BIOS 16.0MB

I have never seen a graphics board shown on the boot screen…

I don’t know what else to do. I have been searching for a solution for the past week. I have found that others have had this same problem but wherever they discuss this happening there is never a solution given. If anyone knows what I should do I would appreciate any help. Thanks.

Also, I have checked the resolution and refresh rate and those are not the problem either. (kept resolution at 640x480 and refresh rate at 60Hz). The monitor is a FPD 1500.

[raybay]

That is an excellent computer. We have one and use it daily.... a real work horse.
Why do you not want to use the integrated graphics. It works great.
Appears to me your problem has to do with disabling the drivers and uninstalling stuff.
I would go back to fundamentals, downloading or reinstalling all the drives from the Gateway site.
The screen that your getting nVidia TNT2 PRO BIOS 16.0 MB is what you should be getting.
Have you upgraded the BIOS from the Gateway site?
What shows up in your Device Manager in System in the Control Panel for video? Do you have red or yellow alert markings? Did you disable the video graphics in the Device Manager.
You are missing something very basic... but we will have to get my machine out in the morning to help.
Re-Think this, after a rest. This is NOT a troubled computer and it works well with W2K... Do you have Service Packs 1,2,3, and 4 installed? It works differently for SP 1 than it does for 3 or 4.

[jbennet]

dont use the newest nvidia drivers for a TNT, im 99% sure you need an older version of them for it

[Boldgamer]

I have just downloaded SP4 and will install it to see what happens. And, as far as drivers are concerned, I don't think that is my problem. I have used older drivers and still achieved the same results. I wish I knew what drivers the system came with because when I looked in the case to see if it was (pci or agp) someone wrote in permanent marker "Do not update tnt2 drivers". The system originally had Win 98se on it. When I recieved it someone had installed a copy of Win XP. I'm not sure what driver version was used with win 98se. But I guess it doesn't matter since I don't have Win 98 anyway...

[Boldgamer]

I've installed SP4 and still no change. I don't know what else to do. I can't use the integrated graphics because the monitor has a DVI connector and the integrated graphics use the standard VGA.

[jbennet]

dvi to vga connector?

andin reply to your earlier comment, its not unusual to see the video crad listed on the statrup screen. My dads says "GeForce MX 2" and stays there for a bit before clicking a few times and showing the usual BIOS bootup screen.

[Boldgamer]

Thank you guys for all of your help. I continued googling and ran across an old post from another forum. I found the .inf files on driverguide and so far everything seems to be working fine. Now if I could only find the drivers for the "pci simple communications controller". No one seems to have them.

[Boldgamer]

Okay. Now there is another problem with this pc. Since I installed the .inf I have been getting random reboots. I don't do anything in particular to make it happen. It just randomly reboots. There is a quick pop up of a blue screen and then it reboots before I can get the error message.

edit: I've found out how to disable automatic reboot on system failure. I'll try and look for a solution when I get the message again.