My computer screen went totally black!! -- A note regarding vgasave

This post is by contributor Arzath, who recently experienced a technical difficulty with his computer.

My computer screen went totally black!!

I could hear the sound of the windows booting up and HDD "clicking" like it normally would on a start up, but I simply could not see anything.

Based on the above observation, I assumed it was caused by the video driver conflict and booted windows in safe mode. Screen came back alive - I could see everything normally.

So I proceeded to check out the display driver... instead of the accustomed 3rd party driver I'd always seen, it only showed "VGASAVE", below it, the start up option was set to "System".

Since I had no idea what this is and why my 3rd party driver is not showing up, I set the option from "System" to "Disable" in hopes of eliminating the display driver conflict --- a move that some experienced users would think, as reading up to this point, a totally BAD IDEA... Yeah, it was one, for I could not load into safe mode nor my screen would come back on normal mode.

To revert the system and have the display come back normally, here's 2 possible solutions:

1: Without Recovery Console:

a. Boot windows NORMALLY.
b. hit window key after windows finishes loading.
c. hold shift + R
d. type "devmgmt.msc" (without quotes)
e. hold alt + V and then hit V key
f. hold alt + V again and this time hit w key
g. hit tab once and then hit V key
h. hold shift + f10
i. hit down arrow key and hit enter.
j. reboot your system and you should be able to see the screen.

2. With Recovery Console (windows xp)

For this method to work, you need Windows Recovery Console. Here's the link on how to install Windows Recovery Console: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058 or you could use the windows boot disk. In the Recovery Console, simply type: Enable vgasave SERVICE_SYSTEM_START