If not, then it is hardware.

(I’m lazy too. I’ve a computer whose monitor gets wonky at times, hardware, most likely, but I’m too lazy to fix it. So when it acts up, I view it from my TV using the HDMI cable. )

This was back in, oh, 1987, or so. There were a few of us at the college doing database work on the mineral and fossil collections. I was leading the minerals group and this other guy, with his own computer, was doing the fossils.

The database program would let you set both foreground and background colors. There was no mouse, so everything was key stoke menus.

One night, I decided to mess with the color scheme on the other guy’s computer. I set the colors to something garish. He changed them back the next morning. I kept this up, every now and then, just for laughs.

Then, with a too quick hitting of enter, I gave his program a black background with black text.

“Oh shit”

Good thing I’d done this so many times that I had the key stroke sequence pretty much memorized and I could fix it without seeing the screen.

Scared the hell outta me for a few minutes, though.

I feel your pain, Rob

It’s also weird how the instructions keep telling you to kill explorer.exe. That made me check the URL to see if this was some kind of phishing scam. But no, Microsoft really did this.

The only one that’s even a little reasonable is to reboot the computer in safe mode. You don’t have to see the screen to click the reset button, if it has one, or cycle the power, or kick it. If you get a low-rez screen in safe mode then the hardware is probably OK, and you need to troubleshoot the video driver.

Good luck man.

A recovery disk is $48. A refurb HP core 2 duo 4GB 750 HD WR-dvd = $126. Since my wife is not a power user this might be a good option.
This time we’ll make recovery disks.