Sceen goes blank automatically

[Jim Fuse]

Yesterday and today I've been having some preblems with my comp. I'll be just doing what im usually doing on it and then the screen goes totally black and nothing response. I'll try to restart and sometimes it wont even get that far and just give me an underscore white line. Another time before that it said that two system files were corrupt one of which being system32\drivers\pci.sys. I tried restarting again though and it was fine for 12 hours but now this morning it happened again. I've run my norton virus check and adaware numerous times and they've picked up nothing. Does someone have any answers to fix this problem?

edit: another question: if i format the hardrive that windows is on and then reinstall it onto it, will my second hard drive work right off the bat without needing a reformat?


-I have windows home xp if that helps

[techie101]

Jim,

This definitley sounds like a system crash to me.  If some of the driver files are corrupt, then it would prevent a complete boot from taking place.

What you can try if you get if booted up, is to run a Diskscan and Defrag.

If you have the Windows Recovery Disk, then you can do a partial reformat of the Windows drive without touching additional drives.
A "partial reformat" acts like a repair not a replace.


Remember that if you reformat the primary partition, you must make it the system drive with the coding X: format C: /s where X is the prompt and C represents the primary hard drive.

Hope this helps.

techie

[Lisandro]

I've run my norton virus check and adaware numerous times and they've picked up nothing. Does someone have any answers to fix this problem?

Did you have both Norton and avast! installed in the same computer?
Or, otherwise, you use NAV in a CD to scan your system?

You can reinstall Windows in one partition and do not 'touch' the other, specially if you want to install in the C: partition. Your data will be safe and you will be able to recover it after the reinstall.

To install Windows in another partition than C:, you must check this at the early beginning of the installation if I'm not wrong.

Good luck.

[WastelandDan]

Hi, I'm a friend of JimFuse who referred him to this forum. He's been trying to fix the problem but unfortunately he hasn't been able to, so he asked me to post a question for him since he can't get online. He says that his C drive has two partitions, one FAT partition with 31 megs on it and one section that's unpartitioned and has 38139 free megs. He wants to know whether he should delete the FAT partition before he tries reinstalling windows again.

Thanks for helping him out guys!

[techie101]

wastland or whoever?

NO.  Do not delete the primary partition.
There are 2 types of filing systems used on drive partitions: Fat16 and Fat32.

More than likely you have Fat32 which is the more efficient of the two and newer systems tend to use it.

Leave things as they are.  Install Windows in the primary partition with the Fat system.

Good luck
Techie

[WastelandDan]

Yeah, he's got Fat32. I'll tell him not to get rid of it. Thanks!

[Jim Fuse]

Shouldnt I just be reformatting the entire C drive into one space in the NTFS fromat though?

[techie101]

Jim,

The choice of a file system really depends on the expectatons of the user.  Since the system is set up to FAT32, I would leave it that way, but if you choose to use NFTS, this comparison chart will help you decide:
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

Then, if you want to use NTFS.....
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B314097

Good luck and I hope the information I provided sovles your dilema.

Techie101