I have been experiencing this problem lately with my flat panel monitor. I was working with Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9 printing some large photos. When I closed out of PSP 9 and went back to the desktop the screen was white. Only the Wallpaper was white, not the task bar at the bottom. The computer did not freeze up and everything worked ok, just a white background. Very odd. I could even right click on the desktop and get to the control panel.


Any suggestions?

I just added another 512mb of system ram to my computer. Is this coincidental or not?

Thanks in advanced

Jeff

Thanks for the quick response APK. I should have stated I was using XP. I tried taxing the video system by playing a game. I also ran the new 3dmark 05, i read that it really brings mid range hardware to its knees. My video card is a Radeon 9600 pro. no problems. It must be something related between my print driver and PSP 9. I can only reproduce this while printing in PSP 9. I can duplicate it everytime if I print a large photo, then while its printing, spool up another photo to print right behind it, then close out PSP 9 while its still printing the first photo. Its either RAM related or PSP 9 related. What do you think? Also, I'm afraid to admit it, I was toying around with some of the RAM latency settings just about the time all this started. I had a couple of failed bootups because of the incorrect settings so I set them back, I thought. Could an incorrect latency setting cause the white screen? I have since reset the BIOS to system defaults and I am going to try and reproduce the problem.

I'm always trying to tweak my stuff to its fullest potential.

Jeff

Try updating your video drivers.

If it happens again, also change your desktop resolution and see if that fixes the problem. If it does then you can probably pinpoint it to your video card/drivers.

I reinstalled the video driver and it still does it. I reset the BIOS to defaults and it still does it. THEN......... (i feel so stupid!) checked the monitor connection.... It was loose. Pretty loose actually. I tightened it up and all seems fine now. Sorry for bothering you'all. That was the last place I would have looked. I pulled the tower out to pull the new 512mb of RAM, suspecting that was it, and I found the loose connection.
Great advice though and I learned some new diagnostic avenues....thanks APK and dosfreak...

Jeff

I've seen similar things like that happen when people store their desktop wallpaper on the network and for some reason or another the network drive containing that wallpaper is unavailable when Windows goes to reread the file. Might be worth looking into...

I think his issue will be back. If the monitor connection was truly at fault then the entire screen wouild suffer from the issue when the symptoms presented themselves. Remember that he said that the taskbar would be fine while it was only the desktop that turned white. A loose monitor cable wouldn't affect a specific part of the interface or only a specific app on the screen... it would affect that entire screen.

It may also be possible that one of the other changes fixed his problem.

Thanks for the reply jaylittle. It was probably a combination of tightening the cable, reseting the BIOS and reinstalling the video drivers that did it. But I did them all kinda at the same time, so its hard to say which one did the trick. I guess I'm not a true troubleshooter or I would have done one at a time, but when it comes to my "baby", I was just in a hurry to get it better again. (plus I was becoming a bit anxious with regards to having to spend money on a new video card or mobo, flat panel monitor or something) so time was of the essence...(I usually cant go to sleep if my computer problems remain unsolved)... I'm just kooky that way I guess....

I dont have a networked drive containing the desktop wallpaper btw...but it was a good shot........

Thanks again,

Jeff

I'm having the same issue with a Dell M65 laptop. I have reloaded the recommend drivers from Dell without fixing the issue. I've also removed the docking station from the equation without effect.

I'm about to try swapping out the monitor cable. Then I will try resetting the BIOS to defaults. If neither of those works, then I'll be checking for BIOS updates. Hopefully I will be able to report back with the something that worked for me.

I have triedd swapping out the monitor cable and resetting the BIOS to defaults. I then found a BIOS update and flashed the BIOS to no effect. Still researching...