Why Does Screen Sometimes Dim / Gray / Translucent ?
Dec 30, 2009
I just installed windows 7 64bit and have been further installing anti-malware and essential programs and drivers but have not finished (I still have unrecognized devices and am mostly using whatever drivers that Windows found on its own.
Every once in a while the entire screen will seem to dim as if you were looking through a cloud. I suspect it is some Aero effect, but I would like to know why it does that as it can happen when I am not using eithre the mouse or the keyboard. It seemingly just does it on its own. It only lasts a second or two.
There was a quick power outage and the computer was forced off. I rebooted and now after the windows logo there is a gray screen that remains a very long period of time before the desktop appears. I am able to move the mouse but that is the only functionality I have.
I've been experiencing a strange problem all of a sudden. When I started my PC this morning, it went on to the blue welcome screen and then suddenly a gray-black screen appears and stays there for a long time. eventually, multiple instances of the same error message pop up with multiple processes:the instruction at 0x referenced memory at 0x. The required data was not placed into memory because I/o error....Upon restarting, I've tried safe mode, repair, last config etc. to no avail. Windows also tries to check c: for errors sometimes, but it just hangs saying some unexpected error was found.
Manufacturer: Dell Model: Optiplex 380 Processor: Pentium Dual-Core CPU E5800 @ 3.20GHz 3.20GHz RAM: 2.00 System Type: 32-bit OS Operating System: Windows 7 SP1
There is a gray box appearing at the top of the desktop over top of the desktop icons. It is about 2" x 3", solid gray, with nothing on it (no text or buttons). It doesn't appear when windows first starts, and the only way to get rid of it is to restart the computer.
[URL] as you can see my proxy settings are blocked and i cant change them, im using the administrator account in that computer.I cant access any webpage but i can use SKYPE chat and play online.
Maybe this has something to do with the last round of updates. There are now transparent gray x's on the corners of the documents on my desktoop. They are on both .docx and Wordpad documents. I opened one of the documemts and it opened find but I cannot understand the purpose of these odd gray x's.
Having a bit of a problem with my taskbar. Its looking kinda strange. That is, it has changed from the theme colour to a grey colour and the graphics have become basic. It looks like the taskbar from something like Windows '98, to be honest. Also, the actual windows that programs open in are also a grey/white colour, like the taskbar. I'm not really all that computer smart. My PC is an ACER Aspire5738Z.
Some how I have changed some settings on Windows 7 or IE9 that makes all my text backgrounds gray and my used links do not change color anymore. I've looked all over the Control Panel trying to find out how to change them back. I've reset preferences in IE9 but nothing changes.
Win 7 X64 to SBS2K3 x86 with multiple shares to same raid array. All mapped drive initially working.Now only 1 map shows a grey "X" over the folder icon with a "This file is currently not available for use on this computer" error message.Inside a H:xxxx is not accessibleOther maps, M, O, S, U to same server and drive are 100% OK and this H for Home directory WAS working.Other mapped drives are OK.Same display and error if browsing UNC to mapped share.Created NEW mapped drive to same share and same problem.Share is fine from other non win 7 PC's XP and Vista (Both x86)I'd been playing with ISO mounting software from MagicISO, MagicDisk, PowerISO, ISODisk, Elaborate Bytes.
As of about 3 days ago my Dell Inspiron N7010 (Windows 7 Home Prem 64bit) fails to boot up. It gets to the initial Windows screen before the login screen and freezes, then sends me into Startup Repair. [code] I've tried running the diagnostics and get no error codes. I've tried restore points, memory diagnostics.. pretty much everything except factory image, with no success. I have a lot of government programs installed on this laptop, so.
My wife did something on her PC (she doesn't know exactly for sure what & can't explain it completely me), and now she can't boot up her PC. She says it had something to do with changing the security settings for a program she uses a lot so it wouldn't keep asking her if she wanted to launch it, and that's when it told her to restart the PC, then it wouldn't boot up anymore.When you reboot, the screen eventually goes to a black screen saying "Windows failed to start. A software or hardware error may be the cause" or something to that effect. It offers me the option to "Launch Startup Repair" or "Start Windows Normally".If I Launch Startup Repair, nothing much happens --- it says it's adding files, then it looks like Windows is about to boot up, then it goes to a black screen for a long time & nothing happens.
If I choose Start Windows Normally, it simply reboots & eventually brings me back to the same screen again.I've tried using rebooting and selecting ESC to get to the boot menu, then installing the Win 7 installation disc & selecting the DVD drive, then I select thelanguage, then I click Repair, but it sits there forever with nothing happening.I also tried an outside boot disc I found on the web & it doesn't launch.
i have a Dell Vostro 1520 and im running Windows 7 with a 32bit. It is only 2 years only. It started about a month ago. I was on my laptop viewing and deleting some unwanted photos i had. A few minutes later i realized that i deleted a photo that i wanted. So i went to the recycling bin and restored that photo. When i went back to my photos and went into the album, it said something like i do no have permission to access this folder. Please press continue to get full permission. I clicked continue and i got the access i should have. Now i tried many more random folders and the same thing happened. Also when i came out of the folders, the folders had a big pad lock sign on the front of it. After that i shut down the laptop and went to turn it back on. The laptop will power on like normal. I can press f12 for the boot options. which i have already tried many times. I also tried it in safe mode and what-not, but still nothing. I can hear the fan and stuff spinning up like normal. I have also put and CD into the CD ROM and that spins up fine. So after the Dell logo on the screen, it goes black and stays that way with the cursor. You can move the cursor around no problem. I should also add that the battery light is and has been flashing for a good wile. Its flashing orange and blue. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the battery. Because my laptop will not charge with the AC adapter in it for many months now. It will only stay powered on with the AC adapter plugged in. One more thing. The LED lights over the buttons. None of the are flashing, besides one, on the far left. And i cant find out anywhere what this LED light stands for.
Replaced my VGA cable with and HDMI cable because screen wouldn't leave power save mode due to lack of communication between tower and screen. HDMI solves that. Now I have no internet connection. No signs of life. Cable guy comes over plugs his laptop into the..box thing where the internet comes from... says the internet is working fine must be your computer and he leaves. So now that my screen is working I can trouble shoot - can't find a network adapter. I have no idea what that means, and it is not listed anywhere on my control panel list of drivers and things. Tried to reinstall whatever that is.. which is hard when your just guessing and clicking things. Bottom line is after using the drivers and devices disc and reinstalling everything that said "network" in the title there is still no signs of life. I don't have wireless so the whole adapter thing isn't making sense either.
one day it suddenly crashed while i was watching a movie. it displayed random patterns on screen. kinda like part of the image from the video is on the screen then a black strip and random colors. I restarted the unit to safe mode and left it on and browsed the net and downloaded some big files for how many hours and nothing happened.. there are also times when windows is still loading with the windows logo on screen, it crashes. there are also times when the login screen is displayed and it crashes. it just crashes randomly! so i tried to reformat it. i deleted the partitions and created a new one, formatted it then fresh installed windows 7 ( my previous OS is windows 7 by the way) and started installing the basic drivers and after a few hours, it crashed again...thinking that the driver installed might not be compatible, i tried another fresh install of windows (same execution, delete partition, create, install OS) and this time, without installing the drivers, it crashed again after a few hours... sometimes it crashes immediately after turning it on from cold start!
My son has a Toshiba Satelite P205 that he just upgraded from Windows XP Home Premium to Windows 7 32-bit. After the upgrade completed the computer booted fine. The within 20 minutes he got the BSOD and the system rebooted. Now he can't get Windows to fully start. We've tried all of the options from F8 with no success. We have the Toshiba System Recovery Disk but it won't launch. (The Boot sequence has been changed to boot from CD/DVD and then the Hard Drive.)The Memory Diagnostic from the Windows 7 disk ran fine with no errors. I'm thinking I might need to re-format/wipe the drive to start fresh but don't know where to obtain a boot CD(no floppy drive on this laptop). Does anyone recommend a software that I can purchase to clear everything without destroying the CD/DVD accessibility so I can then use the System Recovery Disk to put it back to the original factory Settings?
My computer has a problem with crashing while playing a video in full screen. When it crashes the screen turns black while the speakers give out a buzzing noise. Everything is unresposive the only solution is to turn it off with the power button. It happens in any full screen video online or offline and even visualizations from windows media player and iTunes, but only in full screen. I don't think it's overheating either because sometimes it takes 30 mins to crash and other times it will crash immediately when put in full screen. *I've tried setting it back to factory settings thus reinstalling windows. *All the directx features are working with no reported problem there.* I don't think it's a memory issue in the computer, as my specs are:
Windows 7 64-bit Processor: intel core i5 3.20 GHz Ram: 8 GB Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 Graphics card memory: 0.5 GB Any other ideas?
I have an Acer aspire 5732Z. I turn my laptop on and it shows the starting windows screen then just goes to a black screen with a cursor. I tried to do systems restore but it said that I did not have a system restore point. I cannot start in any safe mode. I have all my pictures, uni work etc., and I am terrified I've lost it all. I've only had the laptop a year.
I'm using I have a DELL4500S desktop, on startup it will not go to the login screen, the screen is just black with the cursor showing. I've tried restarting the computer, unplugging everything and restarting it. Nothing is working. When it first starts a pop up shows and says "This Application has failed to start because SAMLIB.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix the problem."I'm not sure what it's talking about and what to re install and I can't reinstall whatever it is because I can't get to the start menu.
Okay so lately I've noticed that my PC isn't displaying the BIOS splash screen anymore and skips straight to the Windows login screen.It didn't really bother me until today when I wanted to boot into Ubuntu and I couldn't select which OS I wanted to use.I'm pretty sure the problem isn't the BIOS itself since I unplugged all the peripherals except the speakers, removed all the RAM and the BIOS did beep repeatedly. And given enough time, I can boot into windows (and only windows ).Apparently people have had this problem before and all the solutions I've read such as "Press 'del' to go into your BIOS!" really doesn't help since I can't see anything in my BIOS menu.The only solution that made sense to me was that my CMOS battery could be dying. I haven't changed my rig since I built it in 2009. The only significant event that happened recently might be that Windows updated itself.
-PC doesn't display BIOS splash screen -Can't see messages displayed by system -When windows does bootup, everything runs just fine -Haven't changed rig for ~3 years
started recently, when I boot my PC, the screen shows message: no signal and screen stays dark.However, in the background W-7 is loading, but in order to get the video functioning, I must restart the PC, turn off the screen, wait till W-7 loads somewhat and (like after 10 sec.) turn the screen on and everything is OK.Monitor is NEW Video card too, I tried with a second one, same problem...My question is, is this W-7, main board, or something else related?
Everything shows up fine until the welcome screen after that it normally used to fade to the desktop but now it goes blank. The screen in Black with only the mouse pointer. Its not hung, i can move the mouse pointer. Then after a minute or so it advances to the desktop. Everything on the desktop loads up in less than 5s. The PC runs fine, it is really fast as there are only a few programs, but only boots slow. My total boot time is about 3-5 min. I think it should be like in a minute or so.I have not tweaked much with the system but have installed a few programs like MS office, Nero, Acrobat and Photoshop. These are the only heavy programs in the PC right now. The only games on the PC are AC1 and AC2. I have uninstalled my graphic driver and reinstalled. I already minimized the programs in the msconfig>startup to the minimum. I have run ccleaner, spybot s&d, Antimalware and i also have a trial copy of Kaspersky AV (upgrading later to 1-year license). there are no peripherals attached during boot except the USB keyboard and mouse. A printer is attached too but is most of the time turned off.
After leaving my comp on overnight i wake up to non-responding programs, i shut down manually and then as i restart this happens. 5minute lag on welcome screen and then it turns blue with a moveable cursor. i have used system restore and created a new user but neither works. i can run perfectly on safe mode.
I just upgraded to Windows 7 on my Toshiba Satellite Special Edition laptop that came with Vista 64bit and the other night i downloaded iTunes 10 and told me to restart my machine so I clicked ok and then my laptop shut off and when it came back on the Toshiba screen came up as usual but seemed to stay on longer than normal then it goes to a black screen with a underscore that blinks for a few moments then becomes solid. Ive tried to use the "F" keys to get different boot options because i have the windows 7 ISO disc and a ubuntu disc that I could use but whatever i try my laptop wont process it just does the same thing over and over again and bever proceeds to the actually boot up windows.
I have a Toshiba laptop running windows 7. It has been running like a well oiled machine since the day I got it.I turned it off to watch TV, then when I turned it back on, the screen shows the Toshiba screen for about 1/4th of a second and then goes black.If I hit F8, F10, or F12 nothing shows up.
I have recently bought a computer and I have found that when I turn it on it runs normally until after the "Resuming Windows" screen, where everything turns off and the screen goes black. It had been running well for the last few days, so this came out of nowhere.I have searched this problem and I come up with a bunch of different solutions but no one agrees. The most common reason (apparently) is my version of Windows 7 Home Premium (x64) and I need to install something or other. But I can't even get to the desktop, and no one really explains it simply. [code]
While attempting to restore a previous backup of my system (with Norton Ghost 15), I got an error, and the system rebooted. Upon reboot, I get the black screen of death with just the cursor instead of the usual login screen. I have tried the following thus far: These all give me the black screen of death with movable cursor:boot in safe mode boot in safe mode with networking boot in safe mode with command prompt last known good configuration I did an initial system startup repair which went through and said it repaired it, rebooted, but no change. I did a pre-boot diagnostic test - nothing memory test - nothing tried restoring from restore point, but it says I don't have any (LIES! BLASPHEMY!) tried restoring from restore point on external disk - seemed okay, then failed. chkdsk - found some stuff, fixed it, no change. tried ctrl+alt+del on black screen of death - nothing
Now, I know that the hard drive itself is alright, that is, the information is still all there still. While I can't give you exact specs, I can tell you that I am on a Dell Studio XPS running Windows 7 home premium 64 bit. I'm at a loss as to what else to do. Despite being a black screen, with just a movable cursor, the system still appears to be running, as every few minutes, it will show the "thinking" cursor, where it shows the little circle next to the arrow.
Blue screen and freezing. This is happening frequently but never has any regularity to it. Sometimes happens after a couple of days and sometimes after a couple of minutes. Also sometimes with only one browser window open and sometimes with 15 or more. Happens with both chrome and firefox. Has not happened with other programs as this lapy only gets used for surfing/email/forums etc. Sometimes happens while the computer is sitting idle right after boot. Very strange.