upgrade problems

You might try booting and then shutting down immedately without starting anything. Do that three times and see if it helps.

Windows has a bit of an ability to repair problems with this process.

Can you get the picture to come back or do you have to reboot? Windows often sets a screen saver when installing. It also often sets the monitor to power down after a set amount of time of inactivity. start/control panel/power settings to change the later. To check for screensaver right click on your desktop/properties/settings/screen saver.

You could also be sure your video and monitor drivers are updated to the latest. Go to the makers website and see if they have newer drivers than you have.

 

The first thing I would do is visit the manufacturer's website and download the latest video deiver for XP. If that doesn' t work, I'd put money on the video card being bad. Thankfully, new video cards are relatively inexpensive, and , if your computer is several years old, you will see a noticeable improvement in performance.

 

Go to start/control panel/system/ and look for device manager, I think it is on the hardware tab.

When it opens look for the video card, right click and choose properties and then choose update drivers. It will go online to see if there is a new one.

If that doesn't work, try the manufac. website.

 

Eeek! That's still young. I'm more inclined to think it's a video driver problem based on the time alone, but it could go either way. The reason I say that is because the symptom you're describing is usually caused by a bad video card, or bad cable (I'm assuming you've checked the cable for being loose, so I won't insult you by advising you to check the cable). Updating the video driver doesn't cost anything, so try that first. If that doesn't work, then try replacing the video card. But before you do that, call teh manufacturer to see if, by chance, it might still be covered under warranty. Making the call doesn't cost anything, and you never know what they might tell you.

 

Oooh! That makes a huge difference. I had a similr problem on my wife's laptop. If you take off the cover, you will see a cable that goes from the screen panel to the motherboard. It's possible that cable might be loose. If your'e not sure how to remove the laptop cover, do a search on youtube. There are several folks that have put visual step-by-step instructions on how to take off the cover and replace it when done. God bless those folks

 

moving from XP Home to XP Pro? That's sort of like moving from a '74 Buick to a '74 Pontiac, ain't it? The actual differences between then are very minor.

Be sure to check the power settings in XP. The upgrade may have reset some of them to a more power saving setting.

I don't know of any video card/chip that is incompatible with XP. Even archaic chips are given basic drivers by Windows itself. The driver may be corrupt, though, so the advice from Johnv would be the way to go, but go to the chip maker (Intel, Nvidia, ATI, whoever) for the latest driver for it.

Not onl could it be a loose cable (especially to the LCD screen), but you could have some dust buildup. A can of compressed air with the extension wand could do wonders. Try blowing it out through the vents first. If that doesn't seem to help much then disassemble it to get to the fan and cooler and blow it and the vents out that way. It really isn't very complicated once you see it done on a tutorial video.

 

Very amusing, my chuckle for the day!

Here's a link to an online article about the difference between XP Home and XP Pro:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1038781.html

Seems like there's not much difference for the home user on a single computer with no LAN.

 

Just doing an upgrade would not cause the cable to loosen. If it were a loose cable, the problem would have been evident before the upgrade. If you have checked the power settings and those are OK, I would highly suspect the video drivers that were installed with the upgrade.

 

You're right, just doing an upgrade would not cause the cable to loosen, but I've been in the IT feid long enough (too long) to know that new problems frequently come up whenever you're working on something unrelated. It's usually just bad timing. It's not unusual for me to take care of a person's network problem, and a few hours later, their sound card doesn't work, or some such thing. Even though the network problem had nothign to do with sound driver settings, I get yelled at by the end user.

These types of coincidences suggest that, either there's some huge conspiracy of computer parts making other parts go bad on purpose just to get you to spend money, or maybe GOd just has a sense of humor.

 

Just out of curiosity, what as the reason you wanted to upgrade?

 

Yeah, for the home user, you probably won't see any difference. There are a few additional utilities that XP Pro has, such as video editing, and such. Sorry about the grief associated with upgrading. Glad to see it's better now.

 

When XP first came out, the Pro edition was less buggy, more stable, and more secure because of its additional networking capabilities. But I think patches have made them more or less equal at this point.