A Blank Screen Could Be a Symptom of a Virus

Q. I have a problem that just developed. I have a recent PC, an Athlon 650 running Windows 98. Just recently I have had situations in which the screen goes blank when I start certain programs. Others work without a hitch. The ones that don’t work are the browser and the backup program included with my Compaq. There might be more, but I’ve gotten cautious at this point and run only the basics. I just upped the memory to 256 megabytes, and that did not help the problem. Is there something I can do or do I need tech support with this one?

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A. Well, you’ve already upgraded your RAM, which is one of the first things we would have tried. But the friendly geeks at Q&A; labs do have some other thoughts on this. We suggest trying things in the order we list them.

First, make sure your box hasn’t been infected with a virus. Scan everything on the computer with an updated antiviral program.

Assuming you get a clean bill of health, we’ve seen this sort of thing happen when too much heat builds up in a system. Make sure all the vents are clear around the machine and turn on the air conditioning if it’s available.

Then try downgrading your display settings. Right-click on the desktop, hit Properties at the bottom of the menu, then tap the Settings tab. If you’re up at 24-bit color, try dropping down to 16-bit to see if that affects the problem.

If there’s no change, try updating the video card driver, which you probably can do by visiting the Web page for your video card manufacturer. Make sure you have a functional backup system in place before trying this, since a failure can be rather traumatic.

If none of that helps, it’s time to call tech support.

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Q. Sometimes--when defragmenting or installing software, for example--I like to shut down everything except Explorer and Systray. A few applications I can close easily by right-clicking an icon on the system tray and choosing exit. Usually, though, it requires digging them out one at a time using Ctrl-Alt-Delete, which can be tedious. Do you know of any Windows shortcuts or third-party solutions?

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A. Startup Cop. We love this free utility, available at https://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,77594,00.html. And, in response to a question from another reader, you can uncompress this download by getting shareware from this site: https://pkunzip.com.

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Dave Wilson is The Times’ personal technology columnist. Submit questions to Tech Q&A; at techtimes@latimes.com.