When you start a Windows Vista-based computer or a Windows Server 2008-based computer, the computer stops responding on a blank screen

When you start a Windows Vista-based computer or a Windows Server 2008-based computer, the computer stops responding on blank screen. This problem occurs when the computer has a VGA driver installed.

When the system detects the display device as using a VGA driver, the original Hardware Acceleration setting is ignored. In other words, the display device is treated as if the Hardware Acceleration setting is set to None.

This behavior occurs because the VGA driver does not support any hardware acceleration. Therefore, it is faster to update the display if the graphics device interface (GDI) performs all the drawing in an off-screen buffer instead of by passing drawing commands to the VGA driver. (These commands are run in video memory.) The display device checks the first graphics adapter only if it uses a VGA driver.

To resolve this problem, change the order of the display divers to make sure that the VGA driver is not listed first in the display device .inf file. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open the display device .inf file.
2. Locate the InstalledDisplayDrivers value. For example, the string that contains this value may resemble the following:
   HKR,, InstalledDisplayDrivers, 0x00010000, vga, mydispdd
3. If you do not need the VGA driver, change the string to the following:
   HKR,, InstalledDisplayDrivers, 0x00010000, mydispdd
   Note The driver supports only the very low display settings of the original VGA standard. The most useful setting is the 640 by 480 screen resolution.
4. If you must have the VGA driver, change the string to the following:
   HKR,, InstalledDisplayDrivers, 0x00010000, mydispdd, vga
5. Save the display device .inf file.