Blank Monitor - hope someone can help

[Gamegirl]

Dell 8100 - 4 yrs old
Monitor - Dell M781S
GeForce2 MX/MX 400
Windows XP Home (Windows ME)

Thursday - screen was just odd. Grey (from light to dark) horizontal lines (wide -1/4" to 3/4") covered screen. Very hard to see icons, text, anything. Played with contrast/brightness, etc. no difference. Did monitor test and it wasy fine ~ took to work to hook up to another pc and it worked fine.

Did not have a lot of time to research, but checked a couple of things at work and decided maybe it was the graphics card going bad. Instead of waiting and doing a little more research, I tried to disable graphics card so system would revert to vga settings. Ended up disabling both graphics in the following manner:
uninstalled nvidia driver, reset and no change so I thought maybe I didn't do it right. So I continued
right clicked on desktop - clicked properties
chose settings tab on display properties - clicked advanced
clicked adapter - properties - disabled (I think this is where I disabled the vga)
Rebooted
Dell screen with bios comes up, windows xp initial screen comes up and then just blank. System continues and completely boots - I can hear all the different programs opening still just a blank screen.

I tried to start in safe mode (F8) and I get a black screen with all kinds of info (looks kind of like the dos screens but no c:\ I think what I am seeing is the safe mode without the graphics?

I also tried to enable vga graphics as it was one of the options when hitting f8 at start up ~ still just a blank screen.

Any help with getting screen back is much appreciated

THX
g-girl

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif forums, G-girl!

You should be able to roll back to a previous good boot through the recovery console in XP. Put the XP cd in the drive and boot to it. Then see below:

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm

[Sylvander]

If you have a system of backup and restore,
and if Ted's suggestion doesn't produce success,
then reformat the C: partition and restore the backup of the C: partition.
If this doesn't fix it [or any problem] then you know it isn't a software problem,
so you then know it's PROBABLY a hardware problem [could be BIOS settings].

If you don't have a system of backup and restore set up at the moment, then do it ASAP. It can save you from all kinds of software [misconfiguration and/or file] problems.

It helps if you keep the C: drive "lean & mean".
I move as much as possible off the C: drive [and keep it as small as possible].
The "Windows" & "Program Files" folders account for 95% of the used space on my C: drive.
All the data that changes day by day [or are considered vital] are re-homed on another physical drive [although another partition would do].
When I "jump back" I still have up to date:
a. My Documents. [Use “TweakUI” to move their home]
b. E-mails for all identities. [use the email client to move their home]
c. Internet Explorer Favourites. [Use “TweakUI” to move their home]
d. Temporary Internet Files. [use the browser (Internet Explorer) to move them]
e. Re-home the Windows Address Book as shown here http://tinyurl.com/24q6l . Use the key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB\WAB4\Wab FileName” to specify its new address. [Its normal home address [in Win98] is C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\(the name you gave your PC).WAB]
f. Any other storage of data files you wouldn’t want to “jump back”.

These can be backed up separately and more or less often.