Not sure. Look for AUTOEXEC.NT and CONFIG.NT in your Windows folder. And search ze 'net for an explanation what they do, how to restore them, etc.

That's possible, but if it was a problem with AUTOEXEC.NT/CONFIG.NT, wouldn't it pop up an error box instead of a blank screen?

Does Start->Run->COMMAND or Start->Run->CMD still work?

Thanks for the quick replies.

Yes, CMD is still fully functional, but every time I try to load up a game (or sometimes even just the setup screen) it gives me a dead blackscreen without any error messages. I've tried it with a wide variety of games, some of which I know used to work in XP without emulation.

I found the FILES=20 line in the CONFIG.SYS you mentioned and changed it to FILES=40, which I thought was what I had done last time, but after restarting, it still doesn't work. Are there any other common issues with XP SP2 that can be fixed in a similar fashion?

As I recall, sometimes at low resolutions video cards default to a refresh rate that may not be compatible with flat panel monitors. The easiest way to check would be if you have a CRT sitting around somewhere.

If you have an nVidia card somewhere, there's an easily-accessible setting that can be changed, but I forget where it is. Search these forums for "refresh" and you'll find it eventually. 😉

EDIT: Might be Refresh Rate for Lower Resolutions? , but I think it's supposed to be even easier.

Thanks for the effort, but still no change 😢

I actually found one of the threads I was reading the last time I had this problem:
VDMS BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH

My symptoms are exactly the same. It's real frustrating, because I know I solved this before.

:EDIT:
God, what a huge idiot I am. The thread I linked contained another link to a patched VIDEOPRT.SYS (the link was broken, but I found the file here), which solved my problem. Thanks again for your suggestions. I'll make sure to write it down this time 😉

Interesting. Is there a list of cards for which that fix is useful?

Perhaps it ought to be archived in Deep Thought.

I couldn't find any detailed information about this patched file, but since the guys in the other thread had very similar specs as me, I could imagine that this problem only occurs with GF 7900/7950 cards. I never experienced these complete blackouts with my old Ati card, or the crappy integrated GPU in my other PC.

maybe these two keywords can be useful: vdmsound and ntcompatible 😉