Boot failure with black screens using Vista on my Dell 5150

I have been battling with Vista CTP (5308) for a few days. I have now installed it twice on my Dell Inspiron 5150 (80MB drive, 2Gb memory, Bios A38) and both times it has installed fine, automatically updated the Nvidia FX5200 driver via Windows update and let me install applications, rebooting a few times as I go along and ending up with a working system. I thought everuthing was fine, as I could reboot and hiberate it without problems.

However in both cases when I came back to boot it the next day it will not boot to a login prompt. I end up at a black screen (note not a blank screen) showing the build number in the bottom right. If I try to boot in VGA mode or Safe mode I get exactly the same. I even tried booting with digital signing off again no effect.

The only option seems to be a reinstall, a lot of work each day if I want to use Vista!

It seems I am not alone in this problem, but normally most people can get into Safe mode and remove some offending driver. This is not an option open to me as Safe mode does not work.

The most common theory seems to be it is the Nvidia driver; so I booted with the install disk, and opened a command prompt and had a poke around on drive C: I renamed the nv4_mini.sys driver, had not effect on the Safe mode boot, and killed the ‘real boot’. This made me think it might not be the video driver, anyway you would expect the VGA or Safe mode work even if it was an Nvidia problem.

I also thought it might be my Mcafee VirusScan 8 anti virus (though it seemed to run OK, but won’t auto-update), so I renamed the Network Associates directory, again to no effect.

So I am open to any ideas, it must be fairly fundamental as it kills Safe mode.