[darthwill]

hi this is my first post!

I need some advice on a very annoying problem. I have had an hp DV2300 running vista home premium for about 4 months now and it has developed a problem where it frequently will not start up. It will appear to start up normally but then the screen will go black and a vertical yellow bar will appear on the right side of the screen. Usually this can be overcome by turning it off and back on again but today it did this six times in a row. What worries me more is that before I bought this hp I returned an acer for doing the exact same thing. I would greatly appreceate any advice on this problem.

[spdabbs]

My first instinct would be to install the latest graphics drivers for your PC, it certainly sounds like a software rather than hardware fault given that it's both intermittent and has been experienced on two totally different PCs. Try booting to Safe Mode, see if it loads straight up.

[DaveA]

Are you using the same monitor with this machine as you did whit the one you returned?
If so, try using a different monitor for a while.

[darthwill]

thanks for the response and advice. Iv tried booting in safe mode and it works fine. One thing I forgot to mention is that I recently installed a load of updates from windows and since then it seems to run a little slow and is a little uncooperative. It is doing better today but if the problem continues I will definitely bring it up again.

P.S. the dv 2300a is a laptop computer so its not a monitor issue, but thanks for taking an interest.

[spdabbs]

OK, given that all is well in Safe Mode:-
1. Boot to Safe Mode
2. From "Device Manager", uninstall your Display Adapter
3. Restart, loading Windows normally
4. Visit http://www.nvidia.com and download the latest drivers relevant to your display adapter (GeForce Go 7200)

Once your graphics drivers are updated, the problem should go away.