My windows desktop is totally black

[Farren]

i have a compaq presario 1500 notebook
it's a p4 2.0
ddr266 768
80gb seagate
32mb ati 7500

the other day i changed my desktop background to black and i used the notebook for quite some time. i trun the machine of and put it on the next day and the the whole windows desktop is black including the start task bar everything i can only see some icons here and there but other than that everything is black.
when you open my computer you can't see anything.
i know it's not a graphic hardware problem cause when windows boots up the screen is prefect even the login screen is fine it's after i put in my password and go into windows that everything gets black.

what do i do???

 

[Ricemarine]

boot into safe mode.

and see if it works.
Then you know you made a misconfiguration.

 

[Farren]

i tried that and it's just the same.
i also tried getting back to my last known good config and it did not work.

 

[Ricemarine]

Hmm, then all I can suggest.
is that you know what your doing in the dark

Try and get into the desktop properties (right click desktop, properties, or up arrow once), then uhh, navigate and try and fix.

 

[Deleted member 4644]

Maybe try hooking a CRT up.. they are more flexible than LCDs

 

[w00t]

try right clicking on desktop and hitting refresh.

 

[thescreensavers]

reinstall the OS.

 

[Bozo Galora]

heres how to do it in the registry including a little app that does it for you - you should be able to see its window. While this is for the logon background, all the other appearance things are there also (colors key)

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/logonbg.htm

I'm assuming you cant navigate into the control panel display appearance screen to reset back to standard
If you have a 15 pin dsub in back of laptop you could also try a crt (like the man said)

 

[Farren]

yeh i tried refreshing atleast i thought i did but to no avail.
i also did hook up a crt but that did not work either it's jus the same old thing
i wonder if it can be fixed without a reinstall.

 

[Farren]

Bozo Galora what do i need to do. the link says something about the registry but i've not clue what does it do.

 

[CrispyFried]

if you can get to the device manager (win-break) delete the video display and let it find it again.

 

[Farren]

hmmm...
that's intresting i could prob do that letme check
i can use my desktop to assume where it is
thanx