HP pavilion grey screen on startup

[beadheadfred]

Hello,
when I start up I get a dark screen with grey around the edges, I can actually boot up Windows,(Vista)but when it starts,the colors are all funny--- hard to see. If I try to make a change and the User account control comes up the colors go back to normal but as soon as I continue the colors go strange again???

 

[ksiemb]

Hello,
when I start up I get a dark screen with grey around the edges, I can actually boot up Windows,(Vista)but when it starts,the colors are all funny--- hard to see. If I try to make a change and the User account control comes up the colors go back to normal but as soon as I continue the colors go strange again???

Verify display properties (resolution etc) are set correctly. Do you have another computer you can plug the monitor into, using same cable to see how it displays ? If the monitor is old, it could be ready to die !

 

[TenPc]

Laptop or Desktop PC?

If a laptop, a recent video update might have been the wrong version. Some (or most) laptops (netbooks etc) don't do very well with video driver (and audio driver) updates if those updates are not directly from the manufacturer website.

If a desktop PC monitor then it could be a recent GPU upgrade without concern for the PSU requirement and not enough power available to give a good resolution.

Usually, though, regradless whether a PC or Desktop, the hazy look is a problem with a video driver, most likely a recent update.

Edit - there were some HP pavillon laptops that had a faulty nvidia gpu chipset that got really hot and disabled the laptop within minutes of operation. There are no more warranties available and it could be that your laptop is one of those problem portables.

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-pavilion-dv2945se/4864-3121_7-33088543-2.html

Seems like the nvidia chip is not the only problem with HP computers -
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Display-and-Video-e-g/HP-Pavilion-dv9000-nVidia-GeForce-Go-7600-fixed/td-p/168459