Mid online session my monitor went blank but HD was still working. Checked monitor on another PC no problem there. Rebooted machine but Vista would not start so ran Repair Tool which could not fix the problem and suggested a System Restore which I did to the earliest restore point available. Still no joy. Then rebooted the system in Safe Mode and tried System Restore from there. No problem using Safe Mode but Restore did not solve the problem.
The system an Acer Aspire E700 came with a utilty to reinstall Vista to it's original state thus losing all data on the HD. I don't have a problem losing the data but cannot seem to access the Clean Reinstall from Safe Mode. Can anybody help me with this please?
You should be able to follow the same instructions as Q7 at this link below from Acer to do a factory restore installation of Vista using Alt+F10 at boot .
Thanks for your replies. I reinstalled Vista from the Acer Recovery Management utility ALT+F10 but Vista stopped during the new installation process when a DOS dialogue box appeared with the following message.
Microsoft PnP Utility
Processing inf : nv_disp.inf
After this dialogue appeared the monitor went blank and the Hard Drive activity stopped. Does this indicate the Video card is faulty as you inferred and if so is there a way to check the card before buying another bearing in mind that I can only access my system in Safe Mode.
When you do a factory restore, it will format the Vista partition clean first, so your previous drivers should not play into this. It seems to be hanging at the point it is installing the drivers from the factory restore for some reason.
Do you have a set of OEM Vista recovery discs that you can use instead to see if your recovery partition may be corrupted?
No I don't have any disks the system only came with the onboard solution Acer Recovery Management to restore Vista. I tried running this again but came up with the same problem when Vista tried to implement.
Have you changed your video card from what it was originally since you first got your computer? If you have any other external devices connected to the computer, disconnect them as well before doing the factory restore.
On the video card front. I have noticed that in recent weeks on start up that on the first screen to appear being the Acer logo on a clear pale backgrounda clear background has become populated with dots and dashes. When I reinstalled to Factory Settings and then restarted the Acer start up screen background had become clear again. On the other hand I did not experience any other signs of deterioration when using applications.
Pleased as punch. I took of the back off my PC and gave the Video Card a wiggle and a dusting, then ran the reinstall again and hey presto. Many many thanks for all your contributions which led me to trying a bit of black magic.
