Screen shuts off when XP starts

[taytay.foster]

I recently did a hdd defrag and chk disk and now, windows won't start up. After the chk disk finished, it asked me to restart the computer and i did and when it came to the point of going to the user logon screen, the screen shuts off. It doesn't just go black..., it turns off completely. I've tried everything i can think of, and eventually i figured it had to be the registry files were corrupted, so i tried to reformat in a last ditch effort to save my computer and not so much the data on it (its a brand new computer. 1 month); the screen just came up with an all black screen and white text saying "cannot reformat". that's it. i can't do anything else. i was able to start up in safe mode once but after that one time, not even that works anymore. I can even push the down arrow key to get to my user logon name (just because i know two taps of the key puts the cursor on my user name) and i can type in my password and the computer will start up..., i know this because it goes through all of its usual start up sounds and the Windows Logon music comes on; but the screen is blank. I talked to Dell support and they had me run a bunch of tests and nothing came up. So they are sending me a new hard drive, but i was wondering if any of you have ever run into this problem and if there was something else i'm missing. I would just rather fix the problem than have to install a new hard drive in my brand new laptop.


Dell Inspiron 9100
XP Pro
3.20 GHz
1 gig DDR 2 DIMMs
256MB DDR ATI's MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9800 AGP 8X Graphics

[andyms18a]

on the back of your laptop do you have a agp out or tv out that you can plug another monitor in to ?

[glc]

You do not "reformat" - you boot with the Restore CD to reinstall Windows, then you use the Resource CD to reinstall drivers.