Restart results in blank screen

During any restart as in SW installing the screen goes blank, a horizontal cursor appears for about five flashes and then, while you can hear the normal HD activity, the screen remains blank even apparently once Win95 has started.

System

166 Intel Pentium
S3 Verge/DX/GX/ PCI video card
Yamaha OPL SAX3 sound card

Fresh 95 install - no programs loaded
Autoexec.bat & config.sys have no entries
Video minimun setting allowed = 256 colors 640 X 480 - now at 256 colors 800 X 600

You can side step the problem by powering off at the time the flashing cursor appears and any power off restart has normal screen during bootup in DOS & Windows.

I've never seen nor heard of this one - any thoughts out there in Helpland?

Did you try the latest video drivers?

The horizontal cursor means <--> ??

C

It is a new card purchased today but I will check for updated drivers.

The "horizontal cursor" is a single " _ " or in otherwords a DOS cursor.

ic

that means you have a startup problem. try read Q174018 from MS KB to know more about Win95 Startup process and then track down the problem.

Keep posting after the latest driver, sound card too.

Moke..

A system you just built. Check the memory, make sure it is seated...

Had this problem several times, in my case the simm was not seated.

Murf

------------------
Murphy's Law- it will go wrong, but we can fix it!!

M,
SIMMs seem to be seated well - removed, reseated, reversed order 3 times with no change.

The same problem occurs exiting Setup - I forgot to mention that and that a new format & 95 install made no changes.

C,
There doesn't seem to be anything to follow up on in the mentioned article which I am quite familiar with.

Can you describe your problem in details again? How about other parts of your system? Actually, I built all my PCs myself, so i don't mind you telling me from the scratch.

From what I understand, you can boot to Win95 sometimes as mentioned in 1st post.

But you always see the blank screen with DOS cursor flashing. Did this happen before or after Win95 Startup Logo? Disable the Logo sometimes help.

You tried the latest video driver.

You tried Murf's suggestion of SIMM.

With blank screen on, do you still hear HD activity? Normally, or with Heavy HD activity sound? A problem of HD???

Did you try step-by-step bootup? I guess there are some conflicts while bootup. Did you check the bootlog.txt?

Keep Posting!

C,
All my systems are home built too - fun & frustration at the same time.

What happens is:

1. A normal startup from power off works beautifully - fast with no hangs.

2. Any hot restart - exiting CMOS, selecting restart from Windows shutdown menu or having a hot restart initialize during a SW install - results in a hot restart behind a blank screen. HD activity sounds normal, normal floppy & CDROM checks seem to be occuring and in fact I feel even Windows fully comes up but still behind a blank screen. All I get visually is a few blinks from a DOS cursor & then that stops but not the loading.
I've verified that there are no TSRs running or any RUN entries other than tray.exe.
If I recall correctly I think the blank screen occured at the very first system start after I entered the BIOS to autodetect & disable AV for the pending Win95 setup.

Windows shuts down correctly but I think this is a real basic problem having something to do with the video driver used during/immediately following POST.

Thanks for the help - guys!

Sooner but more often later wisdom comes to even us stubborn people.

Problem= Video

Obvious fix = Try another video card

Results = No more problem

This ones a record guys. Just to get to the point where I noticed the posted problem I went through 2 dud, brand new Memorex 24X CDROMS, a dud new floppy drive and now a dud S3 Verge video card.

There just has to be a more pleasurable way to occupy myself!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is, but you'll go blind...

Could this happen if the Logo.sys file is corrupted? Or Logow.sys? I've got a couple of Compaq's that hang at shutdown (on the splash screen).

J,
Will heed your warning:=)

As to your SD problem see:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q145/9/26.asp

PS- Your listed E address here is NG.