Several Misc Problems: Installation, Display, and Keyboard

[JohnnyChance]

I just finished building a new system, and have been trying to install Vista on it yesterday and today.

Intel Q6600
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
2x2GB DDR2 800 OCZ
Gigabyte Geforce 6600 (waiting for 8800GT's to come back in stock)
Corsair TX650W
ASUS DVD-RW
ASUS DVD
Seagate 250GB

All three drives are SATA, and Vista is Ultimate 64-bit OEM.

First problem I run into is during the installation. I partition the drive, it installs and then says it has to reboot. It reboots, I get a Copyright Microsoft Corporation and a progress bar, then a "Please wait while Windows prepares to start for the first time..." or something to that effect. The screen then goes all black, and nothing else happens. My monitor is still on, just displaying all black. A reboot in safe mode tells me windows cannot finish installing in safe mode, so I reboot again. This time, when it goes black, my monitor says "going to sleep" and shuts off, ie, no signal.

I try reinstalling, somehow it puts a copy on the other partition, still pretty much the same thing. I try a third time, and this time just let it sit at the black screen when it says its finishing installation. I fell asleep, and 5 hours later when I woke up, it was the same. I read thru my mobo manual (looking for something, anything) and searched google for "vista cant finish installation" finding several results, some here, but none that had a problem like me. After not finding very much, I reboot and...windows loads! Except, when prompted to create a user name and password, for some reason the keyboard doesnt work! It's a pretty standard WIRED keyboard. Nervously, I reboot, hoping not to get a display problem like most of the time (the no display signal problem is intermittent). It reboots and gets back to the main screen, and my keyboard works. I create a user name and password, and then it loads windows. When it then brings up the login screen and asks me to enter my password, the keyboard no longer works. For some reason they have the option of an on screen keyboard! I plink away at that like I am on Xbox Live and login.

I do some menial things, but it sucks without a keyboard, so I reboot. I get the windows logo and then....my monitor goes back to sleep. Reboot, try safe mode, everything is fine, keyboard works. Reboot, i see the windows logo, the login screen then....my monitor goes back to sleep. Reboot, safe mode with networking, DL Nvidia updates. Reboot, login screen, no signal, blank monitor.

I just formatted the partitions and have reinstalled Vista on one, it has rebooted, given me a loading bar and wait while starting for the first time and has gone blank, monitor is asleep. The DVD drive light is on, the HD light is not. This is how it sits right now.

What the hell is going on?

[craig5320]

I've not had the issue with my vista install, but I used to have similar issues with XP and it was to do with my ACPI drivers for the bios etc, in XP I had to specify with F5 that it was a "Standard PC" and not ACPI Compliant and after that it worked but I had to remember to do that everytime I installed.

Not sure if that's your issue but worth having a look down that road.

[JohnnyChance]

where exactly would i have the option to change the ACPI settings? in the bios or in windows? ive never had the need to tinker with them before. thanks.

[JohnnyChance]

Andrej Tozon's blog : Installing Windows Vista on NX7010 - blank screen

this seems to be a similar issue to what I am having. the installation is on-going, but i just cant see it. when it gets to a point where i need to make an input, it just waits. but since i cant see it, it just sits there. then when i reboot, it resumes from this spot and i am able to advance a little farther down the line until installation is complete. what i dont understand is why the nvidia drivers did not help this problem. some drivers wont install in safe mode, could this be the case? i could have sworn i have installed nvidia drivers in safe mode before.

[JohnnyChance]

more:

It appears that the black screen during installation is caused by the display being turned off and not turned on later during installation of display adapters. As testified by some in this thread, I have found the following solutions solve this problem:
If your computer is a laptop, connect an external monitor or TV to the VGA port during installation. This may solve the problem of black screen during installation.
If your computer is a desktop, unplug the monitor cable when you nearly reach the point of screen being turned black. Wait for 10 to 20 minutes or until the HDD actiivites die down. Reconnect the monitor cable. You may be surprised by a successful installation.

from:

black screen of death during installation and fixes - TechNet Forums

[JohnnyChance]

mas:

Welcome to Windows Vista! Both Nvidia and ATI based cards have known
problems for certain models that are still under investigation. If you get
the black screen or corrupt video output after seeing the grey screen saying
"Windows is preparing to boot for the first time", this is a highly likely
culprit. Chances are you panicked and rebooted and keep ending up either at a
ascreen with a blinking cursor or random lines or snow accross the screen
after the "Windows is loading" screen. So we'll take it from there.

1. Rebooot and enter Bios. Make sure the following is set up correctly. If
you have never changed adavanced Bios setting, please call you rgeeky cousin
who has and have him explain as he does the next steps.

2. Make sure that APIC is enabled and ver2.0 is supported. In simple terms,
this is the software that assigns priority to all devices attatched to your
motherboad. Please see Wikipedia for the heavy description. Ver2.0 is
required for Vista to make sure that all your devices will be found during
setup and running the OS. For those with some previous experiance, APIC takes
care of assigning IRQ and DMA addressing to all system devices to make sure
that every device can coomunicate with the system in order of priority. If
you have a computer or motherboard made after 2005, this is almost assured to
be an option. You can get Vista woring under Ver1.0, but we are leaving that
to those with previous experiance and simply saying that this is not a MS
supported option.

3.Make sure that ACPI is enabaled. This is different than above. ACPI is
what makes the computer go to "sleep" or "hibernate". It is universal in
computers after 2000. Make sure you have at least ACPI S1 enabaled. S3 is
only possible in very custom system without headaches.

4. Make sure that MPS table 1.1 or 1.4 is selected. I recomend 1.1 from
personal experiance. This only applies to those with dual-core systems.
Please consult your computer/MB documentation.

5.Make sure that on-board video is disabled if availible. Please also
disable quick/fast boot for your own sanity.

6. Now save and reboot. (Typically F10)

7. On reboot, after the machine has counted the system memory and found the
hard drive, hit F8 to enter the windows boot menu. Your machine has not yet
loaded up winodws from the hard drive, and is essentially no different than a
machine with a blank hard drive. You want to choose safe mode with networking.

8. You will now see the system loading, line by line. Have a cup of coffee
on slower systems.

9. You will end up in Safe mode, but will now be getting a message of not
being able to continue as setup was not completed. Please hit Shift-F10. This
will leave you staring at the command prompt. You do *remember* DOS, right?

10. Type "devmgmt.msc" and the Device manager from the windows controll
panel will show up. Look at the video card. Chance are it will not have an
exclamation point like some devices. Feel free to load up drivers for
anything needed from here if you know how to.

11. Right click on the video card entry and choose "Update Driver..." A
wizard will start to guid you through the proccess.

12. You will see "Can Windows connect to Windows Update to search for
software?" Click "No, not this time"

13.Click Next, then click "Chhose from a list", now click next.

14. Select the generic VGA Driver and click next. Windows will now install
the standard VGA driver. Click OK to close the wizard and then close the
device manager. Now click ok to that old warning about winodws not finished
installing. The system will reboot.

15. The system will now boot up without without hanging or faulting on your
video cards driver. The machine may want to reboot one more time after
setting up your settings. If it does, you may have to repeat the proccess
above one more time.

16. After completing set-up, you should now be looking at the desktop and
thinking "Thank god". Now feel free to install the video drivers of your
choice. Please make a restore point first.

de:

Vista - Black Screen - First Restart/Reboot - Tech Support Guy Forums

i am going to try some of these, see what happens.

[JohnnyChance]

unplug/replug did not work for me. they say to unplug the monitor while you have signal, and then replug after you think installation is complete. i dont see how that would matter, but I unplugged after I was already at the "Black Screen". So maybe this works, you just have to unplug early.

interesting side note: when using the DVI out w/ dongle, I got less occurrences of the "Black Screen". During a "Black Screen" stage, if I plug into the DVI, I get a black screen, but the monitor is on. If I plug into the D-Sub, my monitor doesn't get any signal and powers off.

I searched for problems like mine before posting here, I certainly don't want to bother people with new threads when the information is readily available. There is no easy keyword to search for with this problem, and probably on my dozenth try I found something that led me to search for "vista installation blank screen" which google changed to "black screen" which has been leading to more results and problems that are similar to mine (there seem to be plenty of vista display problems that clouded other searches.)

[JohnnyChance]

The second method worked...kind of.

It got me through the rest of the install process, and I got into windows. But then after about a minute or two, my monitor fell back asleep. I still have the standard VGA drivers installed.

WTF is going on now?

I guess I'll try safe mode, get the new Nvidia drivers and give that a whirl.

UPDATE: in safe mode, under some utility for finding/solving problems, i found 3 problems, none were very clear on what they were or what they affected. one suggested intel chipset drivers for the mobo, so i got those. i installed the nvidia drivers as well. the CD that came with the mobo wont run its update utility in safe mode. when i reboot back into regular mode, i still have only a minute before the video signal blacks out and my monitor shuts off. i have no idea what to do now.

2nd EDIT: When doing the second method listed above (the one that kinda worked, I could not find any settings in my BIOS for MPS Table or APIC. Anybody know if I have those options, and if so, where I can find them?

[JohnnyChance]

I uninstalled the nvidia drivers, did not rollback or use generic vga drivers. On reboot, went into regular mode successfully, no "Black Screen" as of yet. Windows automatically reinstalled the drivers, but I have yet to reboot for them to take effect. I am waiting for the Windows updates to finish downloading.

So I guess the problem is the nvidia drivers. Question now is, how do I fix it? Older versions?

EDIT: For anyone else looking for info on this problem, here is a link to a thread on the nvidia forums that catalogs similar problems from lots of people, but had no real solution. There are some solutions, but they dont work for all people.

NVIDIA Forums -> NO SIGNAL, BLANK SCREEN VISTA

[JohnnyChance]

Out of some bizarre sequence of uninstalling, reinstalling, uninstalling, installing 3rd party drivers, uninstalling and then installing the current drivers....it works. Don't ask me how, it just does. Well, by works, I mean that specific problem doesn't occur anymore.

EDIT: What I think worked for me was that I uninstalled the drivers, and then selected windows to not ask me to install new ones and not to auto install new ones. Then on reboot, i installed the drivers from the driver installer i got from nvidia's site. so dont let windows install them. problem is now, whenever my monitor works fine, my keyboard doesnt.

I have another problem that is just as debilitating as not having a monitor: no keyboard. Keyboard works in safe mode, not in regular mode. In fact, every time I was able to work in regular mode before a Black Screen, I had a keyboard. If I can be in regular mode with no Black Screen, my keyboard does not work. WTF? How are these connected.

Also, I am having a problem with Vista hanging on shutdown and restarts. One time it locked up on shutdown (their O shaped progress...circle froze, and I had to manually shut it down.) and now every time since then it has failed to shutdown completely. I get to the shutdown screen, it says shutting down, and my monitor goes off like you would expect, except the machine stays running.

I wouldnt say this is a huge problem, I rarely shut my computer down, but I would like to get all the workable kinks out. And it appears it may be preventing some things from working properly. I disabled the keyboard drivers to see if that would work, which would take effect after a restart. I restarted, it hung, i manually shut down. Next time in windows, in device properties it still says "changes you made will be applied next time windows is shut down." and when i closed that window it asked me if I would like to shut down to apply changes.

In some goofy way these are all connected.