I turned off my graphics card now I can't see anything

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

Here's a tricky one for you...

Right I considered myself to be quite good on a computer but have now realized I'm not as good as I think I am hence the login name!

I have an HP laptop running vista 32 bit home premium fully SP2'd up.

I very cleverly moved the HP recovery partition off of the laptop onto my backup drive but didn't burn the discs from Vista so just have all the backup files (now copied onto a 16gig flash drive)

It has an AMD Radeon HD3450 graphics card... there is also an onboard HD3200 but both can't talk to each other i.e. crossfire (bios is locked)

I was "messing around" with the ATI CCC versions and after rolling back from an old driver I idiotically decided to turn off the HD3450 in Device manager...

after that the screen has gone black and no matter how I reboot, try to do a system restore (which fails), safe mode fails etc i can't get to the login screen. I see the boot screen, the windows vista load screen but when it switches to the logon screen it goes black.

The long and the short of it is once the vista boot screen disappears (obviously as it tries to switch to the HD3450) the screen goes black.

I have left it sitting like this for a while hoping something would happen and then decided to log in by hitting return entering my password and hitting return.

Sure enough the hard drive starts purring and the vista welcome noise/tune happens and loads up my personal settings... with me looking at a black screen.

I really don't want to have to reinstall the whole OS as (I don't have the discs as I didn't make them! for what in reality is just a 0 that needs to be a 1 in some setting in vista.

So my question is can I either:

1) Boot into dos (please tell me where to download the software etc) and turn the graphics card on from there?

2) Or as Vista is loading and I just can't see it can anyone give me the keyboard shortcuts & keystrokes to turn on my graphics card "blind"!

3) Or if I press the windows logo key can you give me the words to enter into the search/run box again "blind"

4) I don't know.... any other suggestions!

Pls help

Tnx

[SyntaxError]

Access the bios and enable the onboard video. Once back in Vista with the onboard video's drivers installed, completely uninstall the HD3450 from device manager. Probably shouldn't remove Catalyst, as both video cards most likely use the same package.

Then reboot, go into the bios and disable the onboard video. Vista should take it from there.

Edited January 16, 2010 by SyntaxError

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

Access the bios and enable the onboard video. Once back in Vista with the onboard video's drivers installed, completely uninstall the HD3450 from device manager. Probably shouldn't remove Catalyst, as both video cards most likely use the same package.

Then reboot, go into the bios and disable the onboard video. Vista should take it from there.

Thnks for quick response SyntaxError

Unfortunately HP has this Laptop bios so locked down... one reason I have learnt is that AMD screwed up their whole crossfire thing on this puma platform (was going to be a rival to centrino setup with ability to have crossfire for good gaming) but alas there were major heat issues and the closed the bios. All I can change in the bios is the date and time or boot order! Even after pressing F1, ctrl f1 in the bios still nothing. I have removed the cmos / bios battery to try and reset it but that didn't work either... any more ideas?

Tnx

Edited January 16, 2010 by notasgoodasithinkiam

[MrJinje]

Question, when disabling a device via the Device Manager, it alters some setting in the HKLM current control set somewhere. If we could find this setting, in theory, couldn't OP from mount the hive offline and re-enable the device like that

Where does device manager reside in the registry ?

[Guest]

Isn't there a safe mode option to use standard VGA? I know I've seen it on some boot screen. Maybe when the boot sequence is interrupted("Windows did not start correctly" message) and it gives you multiple choices (last known good configuration, vga, etc)? My memory is fuzzy right now.

EDIT: Memory refreshed! Yeah press F8 and you choose enable vga mode.

EDIT 2: Crap, I just realized your talking about Vista. Hopefully it has the same thing.

Edited January 16, 2010 by -X-

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

Isn't there a safe mode option to use standard VGA? I know I've seen it on some boot screen. Maybe when the boot sequence is interrupted("Windows did not start correctly" message) and it gives you multiple choices (last known good configuration, vga, etc)? My memory is fuzzy right now.

EDIT: Memory refreshed! Yeah press F8 and you choose enable vga mode.

EDIT 2: Crap, I just realized your talking about Vista. Hopefully it has the same thing.

Thanks for response. Yeah f8 gives me that screen but vga mode does the same... goes blank/black after initial vista "VGA" load screen... unfortunately for me last know good configuration doesn't work either... as I logged in from the black screen so windows thinks that is the last good configuration! aaarrgg!

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

Question, when disabling a device via the Device Manager, it alters some setting in the HKLM current control set somewhere. If we could find this setting, in theory, couldn't OP from mount the hive offline and re-enable the device like that

Where does device manager reside in the registry ?

thks for response... I'm all ears... anyone out there got a solution?

[jrf2027]

I'm not running Vista any more so I can't guarantee this will work, but it looks promising...

Since you already know how to boot into safe mode, have you tried booting into safe mode with command prompt? If so, do you get a command prompt, or is the screen still black? If you can get a command prompt, you may be able to re-enable the video through the command line.

I found this website that discusses how to enable a device from the command line in XP; however, I downloaded the tool and tested it on my Win7 machine and the 32-bit version of the tool does run under 7; if it runs under 7, it might run under Vista.

http://en.kioskea.net/faq/sujet-1886-enabl...he-command-line

Let us know if this works for you.

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

I'm not running Vista any more so I can't guarantee this will work, but it looks promising...

Since you already know how to boot into safe mode, have you tried booting into safe mode with command prompt? If so, do you get a command prompt, or is the screen still black? If you can get a command prompt, you may be able to re-enable the video through the command line.

I found this website that discusses how to enable a device from the command line in XP; however, I downloaded the tool and tested it on my Win7 machine and the 32-bit version of the tool does run under 7; if it runs under 7, it might run under Vista.

http://en.kioskea.net/faq/sujet-1886-enabl...he-command-line

Let us know if this works for you.

OK trying this but with a twist...

I have pinged my computer successfully via crossover cable... devcon says it can work from another pc so willl try it this way...

[jrf2027]

I was just going to suggest trying it over a network...didn't realize until after I posted that even "safe mode with command prompt" requires some level of GUI. I've been living la vida Linux a bit too much and forgot that Windows doesn't have an equivalent to "init 1".

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

Wow I'm praying this may work and you (jrf2027) might get guru of the year award!

OK devcon is working as I can devcon the pc I'm working on i.e. devcon find * gives me a list of devices.

I can also ping my "black screen" broken computer and get 100% response but what is correct command to get list from broken computer?

Tnx

Edited January 16, 2010 by notasgoodasithinkiam

[jrf2027]

Give this a try:

devcon -m:\\<machine> find * > <YourPath>\List.txt

where <machine> is the name of your black screen computer, and <YourPath> is a path you designate to output the results from the find command.

EDIT: Just thought of something else. You may need to start the black screen computer in "safe mode with networking" instead of normally, if you get any error messages from devcon.

Edited January 16, 2010 by jrf2027

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

Give this a try:

devcon -m:\\<machine> find * > <YourPath>\List.txt

where <machine> is the name of your black screen computer, and <YourPath> is a path you designate to output the results from the find command.

EDIT: Just thought of something else. You may need to start the black screen computer in "safe mode with networking" instead of normally, if you get any error messages from devcon.

OK getting confused with all the <> and in help file it has [<... do i need to use these brackets?

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

Give this a try:

devcon -m:\\<machine> find * > <YourPath>\List.txt

where <machine> is the name of your black screen computer, and <YourPath> is a path you designate to output the results from the find command.

EDIT: Just thought of something else. You may need to start the black screen computer in "safe mode with networking" instead of normally, if you get any error messages from devcon.

OK getting confused with all the <> and in help file it has [<... do i need to use these brackets?

Another thing quickly which might p*** you off... sorry... I have kaspersky 2010 on the broken laptop (and this one) will that make any difference. I mean i can ping both computers and can devcon on this one, with kaspersky 2010. Windows firewall is off on both pc's...

[notasgoodasithinkiam]

Give this a try:

devcon -m:\\<machine> find * > <YourPath>\List.txt

where <machine> is the name of your black screen computer, and <YourPath> is a path you designate to output the results from the find command.

EDIT: Just thought of something else. You may need to start the black screen computer in "safe mode with networking" instead of normally, if you get any error messages from devcon.

OK getting confused with all the <> and in help file it has [<... do i need to use these brackets?

Another thing quickly which might p*** you off... sorry... I have kaspersky 2010 on the broken laptop (and this one) will that make any difference. I mean i can ping both computers and can devcon on this one, with kaspersky 2010. Windows firewall is off on both pc's...

Re safe mode & networking I get the option, it scrolls tyhrough the driver load screen but then stays on that screen (with the driver list showing) and doesn't go any further... is that far enough for safe mode with networking to have loaded for me to access via defcon from other pc?