Only works in Safe Mode ... something about video?

[milohoss]

Oh world of suffering - I put my laptop to "sleep" the other day and opened it up 10 minutes later. It loads, the windows logo happens, and then it sits there loading with a black screen. Never proceeds beyond that.

However, it will actually start working in "Safe Mode" which makes me think it's not a hardward problem, it's something loading skunky (video driver???) in normal mode. Ughhh.. It's going to stink infinitely if i have to send this thing back to Dell and wait around for a fix. Clues? Resources?

Thanks

nick
Windows XP Professional
Dell Inspiron 8500

[pip22]

When your in safe mode, if you suspect video, uninstall video driver and reboot normally. Windows will use it's own standard driver (only 256 colors and 640 x 480) so the display will be crap but if it runs in normal mode like this it confirms the third-party display driver is the guilty party.