Blank screen after login - need help

[bilybob]

I did an upgrade from Vista Buisness 64, to win7 Ultimate 64. Dell Latitude e6400, with Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M. In general, everything went quite well. Except - when I boot up, I get to the logon screen, I hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and I log in, then the screen goes blank. If I hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete again, I get the screen where I can switch user, change passwords, log off, etc. If I cancel this, I get blank screen again. If I reboot in Safe Mode, all is fine. If I uninstall the NVidia driver, then reboot normal, I can log in, but the system is using Standard VGA driver. I have tried various drivers from NVidia, LaptopVideo2Go, Dell (win7 - 181.71, 181.72, 185.81, 185.85, and Latest Vista driver from Dell site). I've tried installing from normal mode, safe mode, I've tried DriverSweeper, I searched the registry deleting all references to the drivers I can find...). One time I did somehow get 185.81 working - I don't know how. It was running fine 5 five days (I did not reboot during that time, just sleep mode), then I got a blue screen, and back to the blank screen after logon on the 1st boot. I screwed with the system for another day, and finally got the Dell Vista driver to run once. Once again all was well, until I put the laptop to sleep in the docking stn, then woke it up - blank screen again.

I'm typing this msg now with the standard VGA driver. The 2 things that bother me about this driver, are only single monitor support, and the machine will not go into Hibernate or Sleep mode with this driver (not to mention the speed of the driver).

I've already spent far too much time trying to solve this problem - any help would be *greatly* appreciated.

Thanks...

 

[bilybob]

So I tried a clean install - everything was fine - I was at my desk with port replicator, rebooted machine 4-5 times as I was installing software. Put machine to sleep, came home, opened lid, logged in - back to blank screen. reboot - login - blank screen.

I'm about ready to go to linux... Too bad I develop sw for Windows for a living...

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[jfar]

Hi bilybob , in case you haven't yet,see if your Bios is the latest one ,and if not you know what to do .

 

[bilybob]

Thanks for the reply.

I seem to have things under control for the moment. The last thing I did was reboot into safe mode and delete the Windows Experience Index data. Now I can boot normally and use the nvidia drivers. I haven't played too much yet, as I'm still afraid... But I'm thinking this may have worked on my upgrade install as well...

So I gather this has something to do with Aero...

I also have a startup script that is supposed to disable aero, but aero doesn't appear to be disabled, so I don't think that is doing anything... I had the script there before and it wasn't working until I deleted the WEI data.

Hopefully this info will help someone else...

 

[knightshift]

Blank screen with cursor after log in

I upgraded my Boss laptop from Vista Ult. to Win. 7 Ult. All went well, rebooted/hard booted serveral times, got all the updates windows had to offer, even let it burn in for 24 hrs. Pack it up, shipped to him. Opens it and logs in and get a blank screen with a cursor. tried serveral reboots and hard boots to no avail. He states that the battery is showing pink (not sure if that has anything to do with it). Any help will do. Gateway laptop, 2GB, not sure on video drivers.

 

[bilybob]

I'm not 100% sure, but it turns out my problems maybe have been related to the DirectX sdk being installed. I'm a sw developer, and we had been using the August 2006 DirectX sdk. Since I installed the August 2009 sdk, I have not experienced the problem.