No VGASAVE during Install of Xp

[Tanhum]

Hello All!! Please help me if you can. Here's the my sad story.

My monitor was in VGASAVE for the display adapter and won't change so I disabled it. I found out later I just needed to install Via 4in1 to fix it. So anyway, I rebooted and behold...no monitor display. No big deal right, so I go into safe mode. It doesn't work. So I try VGA mode and it doesn't work.

Next, I decide to re-install windows xp pro using upgrade mode to fix it. The BIOS display adapters run fine, so I have a monitor until XP decides to load and then no monitor again. So I cant even complete the installation.

I believe when Windows XP loads, it is loading the VGASAFE mode as disabled because I set it that way by mistake.

Does anybody know what file I need to modify so that when Windows loads, I can have a monitor again?

I dont want to rebuild because I have tons of family pictures on the hard drive. Please help!!!!

[meese]

Welcome to Techimo and take a deep breath :-)

First off all if you can't boot to this drive it does NOT mean you can't recover all of your files. You can always take this hard drive out the pc, change the jumper on the drive to make it a slave, and install it into another machine with the same operating system. Then boot this other machine normally. It will now have a second drive listed in My Computer. You should be able to get to your files this way.

As far as you video problem goes, try getting a hold of a PCI video card or something, remove your current card and install this other one. See if you can get video this way.