Repairing and Upgrading Your PC

Troubleshooting Video Adapters Problems

If you experience video problems, first check the obvious things—that the display has power and is connected properly to the adapter, that no one has changed settings for the adapter or display, and so on. Boot the system in Safe Mode (press F8 during boot to display the Windows boot menu) to load the vanilla Windows display drivers and verify that the adapter and display are functioning properly. If you have another display handy, try connecting it to the problem system to eliminate the display as a possible cause.

Advice from Brian Jepson

You may also want to try the most recent WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) driver—this may be older than the most current driver. Sometimes, the latest driver posted on the vendor's web site still has some bugs that need to be ironed out while they are working on certification from Microsoft. I think WHQL certification is far from a guarantee of trouble-free operation, though, but it's worth a try if you think you have a buggy driver.

Once you eliminate those possible causes, the next consideration is whether you've made any recent changes to your video hardware, software, or configuration. If so, that is a likely cause. Sometimes, problems caused by such a change don't manifest immediately. We have, for example, seen an updated Windows video driver function perfectly until one particular program was loaded or another piece of hardware was installed, which caused the system to crash and burn horribly. ...