A strange graphical glitch in XP Pro has rendered one of my systems unusable.

[Jason]

I have had this one system laying around for about a month now. I was taking my time picking out a desk before I got it set up again. So my desk is here, and I got everything all hooked up, booted 'er up, and... I can't use the system!

My wallpaper shows up. I can see icons. I cannot see any of the actual UI components though. The taskbar, any part of a window, and sort of dialog box, all appear as solid black. I'm at a complete and utter loss as to how to go about remedying this problem. I tried booting into safe mode, but the graphical glitch shows up there as well.

Help?! Do any of you have an idea as to what might be wrong? Any suggestions as to how to fix this weird nonsense?

I absolutely have to be able to navigate my way around this OS. I have tons of files I can't afford to lose through a format and a fresh install.

[code]

I have had this one system laying around for about a month now. I was taking my time picking out a desk before I got it set up again. So my desk is here, and I got everything all hooked up, booted 'er up, and... I can't use the system!

My wallpaper shows up. I can see icons. I cannot see any of the actual UI components though. The taskbar, any part of a window, and sort of dialog box, all appear as solid black. I'm at a complete and utter loss as to how to go about remedying this problem. I tried booting into safe mode, but the graphical glitch shows up there as well.

Help?! Do any of you have an idea as to what might be wrong? Any suggestions as to how to fix this weird nonsense?

I absolutely have to be able to navigate my way around this OS. I have tons of files I can't afford to lose through a format and a fresh install.

Try buying a cheap graphics card off of Ebay, or online.. Newegg, or in the store if you want to pay that much.

[Stabwound]

Well I doubt that it's a videocard issue, but other than that I'm not sure. I had a similar problem before when I had a custom WinXP desktop theme setup and I deleted it accidently. Every window/toolbox was pure black... it took me about an hour but I finally managed to guess my way through changing the theme.

Other than that, if you REALLY need the stuff on the harddrive, you could open the case up, take out the harddrive, and hook it up in another machine as a slave drive. You could then boot up the machine and copy/backup any of the files you need.

[geekbot]

Or if you have a secure LAN, share the drive (ftp, etc) and download everything over the LAN.

Another thought that probably won't work- are things visible if you VNC/NetMeeeting/PCAnywhere into your machine?

[Stabwound]

If every window and toolbar is pure black, that might be a bit tough. =P

[Arikel]

Hum...from what u say the problem is in the X-windows system i guess...well try to reinstall it using the comand line and then recompile the kernel...dunno i guess it might work. If ur using windows try to reinstall it again without erasing anything do it with one of those old startup discs and then install it to a new partition, u can create it with partition magic... well after this is done u can save all your work and format your hard drive... after that you will have to deal with the existing partition u can either remove it with partition magic or u can use it for swapping wich might make ur os runs much more fast since u have a swapping partition that is not fragmented well u decide after...