Logitech MX500 mouse replacement: Logitech G400

Quite a while back, circa 2005, I purchased a Logitech MX500 mouse.  It served me very well for many years at my primary mouse, both at home and at work.  I first used the MX500 at home, then later decided to bring it into work; I purchased a Logitech MX518 mouse, the successor to the MX500, for use at home.

Finally, this past week, after 7+ years of quality service, my MX500 flaked out: When holding down the left mouse button to drag something, the mouse button would randomly start “releasing", even though I was firmly holding down the physical button.  This quickly started causing me lots of problems when selecting blocks of text, reordering items in lists, and performing other operations. I decided I needed to replace the mouse.

Now, in 2012, the model MX500 has been discontinued; its successor, the MX518, has also been discontinued.  The modern successor to the MX500, as I found after doing some research, is the Logitech G400 mouse. 

As you can see, the MX500, the MX518, and the G400 all have the same-shaped chassis.  Despite the G400 being marketed as a “gaming mouse,” I’ve found that it’s perfectly suitable for office use, and is a seamless replacement for my MX500.  Having used the new G400 for most of this week, I don’t even notice any difference while using the new mouse between it and my old MX500. 

So if you’re in the same position I am, and your Logitech MX500 (or MX518) has recently died, and you’re looking to replace it with something that works and feels the same, I can recommend the G400 as a solid replacement.

Possible Fix: On boot, blank screen after Windows 7 logo

This past week, my HTPC spontaneously started having a problem where, when booting, after the Windows logo was displayed, I would just get a blank (black) screen.  Windows apparently loaded ok – I just couldn’t see anything the screen.  One afternoon, things were working fine, but later that evening (not having manually made any changes to the PC), the problem started occurring.

In an attempt to keep this post brief, I’m going to omit the myriad of troubleshooting steps that I went through to try to correct this, and just provide the one that worked for me. If you’re having a similar issue, you can skip to the end of this post for my solution, although I’d suggest at least skimming the System Configuration and Symptoms to get a better idea of whether or not this solution might be applicable for your situation as well.

System Configuration

This problem occurred on a PC running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, with an nVidia GeForce GT 430 video card, connected via HDMI cable to a TCL L40FHDF12TA LCD HDTV.

Prior to the problem occurring, the PC was successfully sending both video and sound to the HDTV via an HMDI cable, connected to the HDMI-out on the video card, and one of the HDMI-in ports on the TV, at the TV’s native resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p).

Symptoms

• Upon a reboot, the PC would correctly display the text-mode POST information, followed by the graphical Windows 7 logo; but after that, the TV would just display a blank (black) screen.  The TV would report it was getting a 1280x720 signal from the PC. Also, the normal Windows boot sound did not play (even though I did have the volume up on the TV).
• The problem would persist even after turning the TV off and back on, or changing channels on the PC and then changing back to the “HDMI 1” input, or when disconnecting and reconnecting the HDMI cable (without rebooting).
• When booting into Safe Mode, the Windows desktop would display properly, and the system would be usable (albeit without sound, and at a reduced screen resolution). 
• At one point midway though the troubleshooting process, I got things “partially fixed” such that the Windows desktop would come up when booting normally (not into Safe Mode).  (Unfortunately, I don’t recall exactly which specific troubleshooting step I took over the course of the multi-hour troubleshooting process to make this happen.)  When in the system was in this state, I observed multiple problems:
• In the Screen Resolution dialog, Windows would only let me let me set the monitor to a maximum resolution of 1280x720 – not the full resolution of 1920x1080 supported by the TV.
• Windows recognized the monitor as a “Generic non-PNP monitor”, not as the actual TCL TV model.
• No sounds would play. In the Sound dialog (accessed from the Control Panel), there was an nVidia HDMI sound output listed, but it had a listed status of “Not plugged in” (even though the HDMI cable actually was plugged in).
• The nVidia Control Panel software showed that the monitor was connected via DVI – not via HDMI as it actually was connected.  The software didn’t display a dropdown that would allow the connection type to be changed.
• The same symptoms persisted when connecting the PC to the TV via the video card’s DVI-out port, the TV’s HDMI-in, and a DVI-HDMI adapter (and rebooting).

Solution

After trying many things to fix this, what eventually ended up working for me to fix the problem was to use Windows 7 System Restore to restore the system to a restore point a couple of weeks before the problem started happening.  Once this was done, all symptoms immediately went away; the TV once again successfully sent video and sound to the TV, Windows recognized the monitor as a TCL TV (not as a “generic non-PNP monitor”), and Windows allowed me to change the screen resolution to the TV’s native resolution of 1920x1080.

I’m still somewhat mystified as to the initial root cause of the problem; my best guess is that some Windows system file related to display output was (somehow) damaged, and that this was corrected by the System Restore.  The only thing listed on the System Restore dialog between the present time and the restore point that I selected (other than several manual video driver updates that I had applied during the troubleshooting process) was a series of automatically installed Windows Critical Updates. 

(The problem apparently wasn’t with one of the nVidia video driver files, as I tried installing multiple different versions of the display driver software to correct the problem, without success.  I even went so far as to use a “driver cleaner” utility to clean out all of the old nVidia files and registry entries before re-installing a new driver.)

If you’re having the same problem that I was, this solution may or may not work for you.  Still, it may be worth trying a System Restore as part of your troubleshooting process if other more obvious solutions (checking cables, reinstalling the video driver, etc.) aren’t working for you.  I hope this helps!

How to configure Windows 7 to natively launch applications via custom keyword shortcuts

This article describes a way to configure Windows 7 to launch applications and websites from the “Search programs and files” field in the Windows 7 Start menu using custom-defined shortcut keywords – without using the mouse at all.  This is similar to the functionality of 3rd-party utilities such as Slickrun, Launchy, and Quicksilver, but with this method, no 3rd-party software is required!

As an example, this technique could be used to set up the keyword “ff” as a shortcut for launching the Firefox browser.  You would be able to launch Firefox from anywhere in Windows simply by typing the following four keystrokes:

[Windows Key]
ff
[Enter]

Doing this would bring up the Windows start menu and enter “ff” into the “Search programs and files” field; after having followed the steps detailed in the remainder of this post, Windows will recognize “ff” as a “Program”, and therefore will give it the focus automatically; you can then just press Enter to launch “ff”, which is configured as a shortcut for launching Firefox.  This is shown in the highlighted portions of this screen capture of the Windows 7 Start menu:

Step 1. Create a “Shortcuts” folder

Create a new folder named Shortcuts at location:

%appdata%\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\

The folder doesn’t have to be named Shortcuts; you can use something else if you like. 

Note that because this folder is created under the Start Menu\Programs folder, this new folder and its contents will show up as a folder on your Start menu. 

Why does the folder need to be created at this location?  This needs to be done so that Windows will recognize shortcut files placed in that folder as “Programs” when the shortcut filename is keyed in to the “Search programs and files” field on the Start menu.

Step 2. Create a shortcut to the new Shortcuts folder

This step is optional, but to make things easier, I suggest that the first new shortcut you create is a shortcut to bring up the Shortcuts folder itself in a new Windows Explorer window. 

One way to do this is to manually open up an Explorer window (Shortcut key: [Windows Key] + e) and enter in that window’s address bar:

%appdata%\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Shortcuts

Then, drag the yellow folder icon from the left side of the address bar into the main area of the window to create a shortcut to that folder. 

Finally, rename the shortcut (Shortcut key: [F2]) from Shortcuts – Shortcut to just shortcuts. 

Once this is done, you can test the new shortcut by pressing [Windows Key] to open up the Start menu, typing in “shortcuts”, and pressing [Enter].  A new Windows Explorer window should open, showing the Shortcuts folder.

Step 3. Create Application Shortcuts

Now you’re ready to create some shortcuts to run applications!  To create a named shortcut to launch a particular application, just create a shortcut to that application in the Shortcuts folder you created, and name the shortcut file to whatever you want the keyword to launch the application to be.  Then, to test the shortcut, press [Windows Key], key in the shortcut name, and press [Enter]. 

One easy way to create a shortcut to a particular program is to use the right mouse button to drag and drop that program’s entry from the Start menu to a Windows Explorer window that’s open to the Shortcuts folder.  After dropping the item, select “Create Shortcuts Here” from the context menu that appears.

After keying in the shortcut name (and before pressing enter), you should see your custom shortcut appear immediately as the first item in the list of real-time search results that Windows generates under the “Programs” heading.  Since Windows considers the shortcut to be a “Program,” pressing enter causes Windows to run that program without you even needing to arrow key down to that search result in the Start menu – Windows selects it for you by default.  Nice!

One caveat: For me, for certain single-character shortcuts (such as “g”, but not “n”), Windows doesn’t recognize the shortcut file as a “Program” in the start menu. If a given single-character shortcut doesn’t work for you, I’d suggest trying a two (or more) character shortcut keyword instead; all two-or-more-character shortcut keywords that I’ve tried have worked for me.

To give you some ideas on getting started with creating your own shortcuts, here are just a few of the shortcuts that I currently have set up on my local PC:

ecl	Eclipse IDE
ff	Firefox
irfan	IrfanView
n2	Notepad2
pdn	Paint.NET
timer	Orzeszek Timer
vs	Visual Studio IDE
wmp	Windows Media Player

These shortcuts even work with parameters, for example, with my configured “timer” shortcut, I can key in “timer 5m” to start Orzeszek Timer running with a 5-minute timer.

Step 4. Create Website Shortcuts

You can also set up shortcuts to launch a particular website in your default web browser.  To do this, just create a new shortcut from Windows Explorer in your Shortcuts folder (right-click | New | Shortcut), and in the item location field, paste the URL of the target website (such as “http://blog.jonschneider.com”, without the quotes).  Then, name the new shortcut with the keyword you’d like to type to launch that website, and that’s it!

Open Question: Websites with Parameters

One thing I have not yet figured out how to do using this technique is to elegantly set up a shortcut to launch a website with a particular parameter.   For example, I’d like to be able to key in “g search terms” to bring up Google in a new tab and the default browser, and run a search for search terms.  That is, a new browser tab would be opened with the url http://www.google.com/search?q=search term.  If anyone knows of an elegant way to do this (without resorting to the use of a 3rd-party background program like Slickrun), please leave a comment and let me know!

HTPC: Displaying the Windows Media Center actively recording program on an LCD Display

A project that I took on over this past Christmas break was to get my HTPC to display on an LCD display mounted in the PC’s case informaton about the TV program actively being recorded by the Windows Media Center DVR, so that I could see what was being recorded even when the attached TV was off.

The basic hardware/software setup for this project was:

• LCD Display: An nMediaPC PRO-LCD-B display, which is a blue LCD display that can display 2 rows of 20 characters, and fits into a standard PC case 5 1/4” drive bay. 
• A PC running Windows 7 64-bit, configured to act as a DVR using Windows Media Center.

This project turned out to be significantly more complex that I originally planned on it being, although after nearly a full day of tinkering, I did finally get it to work!  The remainder of this post is a set of instructions for what I did to get the LCD display working to display the active Windows Media Center recording (leaving out many of the missteps and dead ends I encountered along the way, although I do include a couple of the major ones as an appendix at the end of this post). 

I’m providing this information for my own future reference and in the hopes that it may be helpful to you, the reader; however, please note that this is in no way an “official” set of instructions.  It worked for me, but may not work for you.  Your mileage may vary.  I am awarding this post the official Jeff Atwood / Jon Galloway “It works on my machine!” seal of approval. 

These instructions assume that you already have Windows Media Center actively running as a DVR on your PC, and that you have a reasonable level of technical expertise, and patience – there are a lot of steps here, and quite a few “moving parts” to get working together!

Enough disclaimers; on with the show!

1. Purchase the nMedia PRO-LCD-B LCD Display

Purchase the nMediaPC PRO-LCD-B.  As I write this post, it’s available from newegg.com for US $38 shipped.

Other nmMdiaPC PRO-LCD models may work with these instructions as well, but I only tried them with the PRO-LCD-B.

2. Install the PRO-LCD-B hardware

Power off your PC, and install the PRO-LCD-B in an empty 5 1/4” drive bay. 

The install was fairly easy; the PRO-LCD-B has two connections: One to a standard disk drive power cable from the PC’s internal power supply, and one to a 4-pin USB connection on the motherboard.  My HTPC’s motherboard (a Gigabyte AMD GA-MA785GM-US2H) had several such 4-pin USB leads available on the motherboard, even with all of my case’s front and rear USB ports already hooked up.

(When I powered my PC back on, I *think* I saw some stock/default text on the LCD display, but I’m not 100% sure about this – and I’m not about to voluntarily revert my HTPC to that state at this point just to double-check.) :-)

3. Install the PRO-LCD-B driver software

Download and install the PRO-LCD-B driver software from the nMediaPC website:

http://www.nmediapc.com/LCD/download.htm

I also have a mirrored copy (current as of January 2012) in the event that the file ever becomes unavailable from the nMediaPC site:

http://jonschneider.com/jsblog/CDM20600.zip (1.8 MB)

(Although at this point my next step at this point was to install nMediaPC’s “M-Play Home Center (MHC)” software to drive the LCD display, this turned out to be a dead end, and I recommend you skip it if your goal is to get your LCD display to show the actively-recording Windows Media Center program.  See the “Dead Ends” appendix at the end of this post for more on this.)

4. Install LCDSmartie

LCDSmartie is a free open-source program for Windows that can drive the display of text on LCD display devices, including the PRO-LCD-B.

I downloaded and installed the 5.4.2.92 beta release (dated June 8, 2011).  LCDSmartie downloads are available from here:

http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/smartied.htm

I mirrored the 5.4.2.92 beta release here:

http://jonschneider.com/jsblog/lcd_smartie_v5.4.2.92 Beta.zip (2 MB)

Uncompress the “lcd_smartie_v5.4.2.92 Beta” folder and its contents from that .zip archive.  I put this folder onto the root directory of my C: drive.

5. Install the lisvfd.dll display driver for LCDSmartie

None of the out-of-the-box drivers that come with the LCDSmartie 5.4.2.92 release work with the PRO-LCD-B.  However, there is another driver available on the LCDSmartie site that did work for me: the “L.I.S VFD” display driver.

It’s available on the LCDSmartie SourceForce site from here:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/lcdsmartie/lisvfd.zip?download

If that link doesn’t work anymore, try looking for it on the LCDSmartie site download page under “Plugins”, or else download my mirrored copy:

http://jonschneider.com/jsblog/lisvfd.zip

After downloading that, place the lisvfd.dll file from the .zip archive into the “displays” folder under your LCDSmartie installation folder.

6. Configure the lisvfd.dll display driver in LCDSmartie

Run LCDSmartie (via the LCDSmartie.exe file in the extracted “lcd_smartie_v5.4.2.92 Beta” folder that you created in step 4 above).

When LCDSmartie comes up, it should show a small window showing the content that it is sending to the LCD display (although nothing will actually appear on the PRO-LCD-B until the steps in this section are completed).  Click the “Setup” button in the lower-left corner of the window to bring up the Setup window.

In the LCDSmartie setup window, in the “LCD Size” dropdown in the Display Size section in the top-right corner, select the “2x20” value (the display size of the PRO-LCD-B).

Next, still in the Display Size section, click the Plugin tab.  In the Display Plugin dropdown, select lisvfd.dll.  (This option will only appear if you copied the lisvfd.dll file into the LCDSmartie “displays” subfolder in the previous step.)

For the next step, you need to know what COM port your PRO-LCD-B is running on.  To determine this:

• Bring up the Windows 7 “Devices and Printers” screen by opening the Windows Start menu, typing “devices” into the text field, and selecting the “Devices and Printers” option that appears.
• On the “Devices and Printers” screen, in the “Unspecified” section, look for a device named “FT232R USB UART”.  Right-click on it and select Properties from the context menu.
• On the Properties window, select the Hardware tab.
• In the “Device Functions” table that appears, look for an entry like “USB Serial Port (COM4)”, where the “4” might be any number.  Make a note of that number.
• Close the FT232R properties window and the “Devices and Printers” window.

Then, return to LCDSmartie.  (It doesn’t appear in the Alt+Tab list on my machine, so you may need to select it from the Windows taskbar).  In the LCDSmartie Setup dialog, in the Display Settings section, in the Plugin tab, in the Startup Parameters field, enter “COM4,38400” where “COM4” is the actual COM port value from the Devices and Printers section above.

• If for whatever reason you couldn’t find the FT232R device in “Devices and Printers”, then an alternative here might just be to try entering different values for the COM port number in this field to see if you can get something to display on the PRO-LCD-B screen.

Once this is done, click OK on the LCDSmartie setup dialog.  You should now see some text from LCDSmartie (a scrolling LCDSmartie logo, and possibly some other information) appear on the PRO-LCD-B screen on your PC!

7. Install the “LCDSmartie dll to display Windows Media Center status”

Once LCDSmartie is successfully configured to display information on the PRO-LCD-B screen, the next step is to get it to display what’s currently recording in Windows Media Center.  A plug-in called “LCDSmartie dll to display Windows Media Center status” by Dave Perrow can be used to do this.

Download the “LCDSmartie dll to display Windows Media Center status” from its website, here:

http://mcedll.codeplex.com/

Or grab my mirrored version (current as of January 2012):

http://jonschneider.com/jsblog/MCE_DLL.zip

Extract the MCE_dll.dll, MCE_dll.cfg, and MCE_dll.ini files to the “plugins” folder under your LCDSmartie installation.

8. Install Windows Media Center TCP/IP Controller

The MCE_dll plugin relies on another piece of open-source for Windows called Windows Media Center TCP/IP Controller (or “TcpIpController”) to function.  TcpIpController publishes a “feed” of what Windows Media Center is currently doing (including what program it’s recording) to a particular TCP port on your PC, where it can be read by MCE_dll.

I installed the “Win7 64 and 32 bit Alpha - button command fix” release of TcpIpController.  (Note: This is not the default release of TcpIpController – I’m not sure whether or not the default release works with MCE_dll.)

Download the “Win7 64 and 32 bit Alpha - button command fix” release of TcpIpController from its codeplex.com website here:

http://vmccontroller.codeplex.com/releases/view/23251

Or get this version from my website:

https://jonschneider.com/jsblog/Setup%20x64.msi

Run the downloaded .msi file, and continue through the prompts to complete the installation wizard.

When the installation finishes, reboot – without a reboot, TcpIpController will not work properly.

9. Configure TV channel names

The MCE_dll plugin will display the name of the channel being recorded, along with the channel number and the name of the program being recorded.  It gets the channel number and program name from Windows Media Center (via the TcpIpStatus plugin), but we need to manually supply the channel names.

To do this, in a text editor, open the MCE_dll.ini file that you previously placed in the “plugins” folder under the LCDSmartie folder, and replace all of the values with the channel numbers and names for your local channels.

(You can skip this step if you happen to live in the same region of Scotland as the MCE_dll author.) :-)

10. Configure LCDSmartie to use the Windows Media Center status (MCE_dll) plugin

Now that we have the MCE_dll plugin and its TcpIpController dependency in place, we need to configure LCDSmartie to use them.

Bring up the LCDSmartie Setup dialog.  In the “Screens settings” section, make sure Screen 1 is selected (set the value of the Screen field to 1), and then replace the values in the two large fields in this section (which represent what LCDSmartie will display on the PRO-LCD-B screen):

Line 1: 

$dll(MCE_dll.dll,1,,)

Line 2:

$dll(MCE_dll.dll,2,,)

An explanation of what these values mean, along with some other values you can play with, can be found on the MCD_dll plugin site.

Finally, click OK.  If your Windows Media Center is actively recording something, you should now see the channel number, channel name, and show name on the PRO-LCD-B display!

The finished product on my HTPC (with the PRO-LCD-B installed just below the DVD drive):

(The actual LCD display image is far cleaner/sharper than it appears in the photo; my iPod camera refused to take a nice image of it.)

11. Configure LCDSmartie to run at Windows startup

In the LCDSmartie setup dialog, in the Startup/Shutdown tab, click the “Autostart hidden” radio button, then click OK.

Appendix: Dead ends

A couple of the things that I tried that didn’t work:

• A piece of open-source software for Windows called LCDWriter by “andy vt” says that it will also get an LCD display to display what Windows Media Center is currently recording, among several other functions.  However, I couldn’t get the 64-bit version to successfully display anything to my PRO-LCD-B; and the 32-bit version (which can work with LCDSmartie display plugins via a wrapper dll) gave me a runtime error on my PC every time I tried to run it, so I eventually gave up on getting it to work on my PC.
• The default PRO-LCD-B display software from nMedia has a lot of cool functions, and it was very easy to install and get initially working, but I was unable to successfully get it to display the recording program in Windows Media Center.  It also seemed to be slightly buggy in other ways (at least for me); for example, after exiting Windows Media Center, the PRO-LCD-B would continue to display “Channel Listing”, for example, instead of reverting back to the default date/time display.

Appendix: Thanks!

Thanks to the authors of LCDSmartie, the lisvfd.dll display driver, the “Windows Media Center status” plugin for LCDSmartie, and the Windows Media Center TCP/IP Controller.  Without all of those open source projects having been developed and made freely available, I wouldn’t have been able to complete this project – or at least, it would have taken me significantly longer to code up a solution myself!

Blank screen after Windows logo: Apparent broken video card

I got a call from my wife while I was at work yesterday: There was a problem with our primary home PC, which runs Windows 7.  As the machine was booting, after the BIOS data appeared followed by the graphical Windows 7 “loading” logo on the primary monitor, the primary monitor went into sleep mode (as though it had been unplugged from the PC).  By moving the mouse around, the mouse cursor was visible on the secondary monitor, but clicking it (including right-click) didn't do anything.

Getting home, I saw the problem for myself.  I concluded that the Windows logon screen was being displayed on the primary monitor -- I just couldn't see it because the primary monitor was off.  I was able to log onto the machine blind (by arrowing over to my user profile, hitting Enter to activate it, keying in my password, and hitting enter again to log in).  Once in to Windows, I was able to make my secondary monitor become the primary monitor, via right-click on the desktop, selecting Screen Resolution from the Right-click menu, “rescuing” the Screen Resolution window from the sleeping primary monitor onto the secondary monitor to make it visible, then checking the “Make this my main display” checkbox on the secondary monitor.

I spent pretty much the entire evening troubleshooting the problem.  Here the long list of troubleshooting steps I tried:

Verify both ends of the monitor cable were firmly seated: It was seated properly.

Cold reboot: No change in behavior.

Install the latest video driver (for the video card, an NVidia Geforce 6800 GT): No change in behavior.

Install the latest monitor driver (for the primary monitor, a ViewSonic VX2035wm connected via DVI): No change in behavior.

Uninstall the monitor drivers (and let Windows reinstall them after rebooting): No change in behavior.

Uninstall Microsoft Security Essentials (which I had just recently installed) (on the theory that MSE could somehow be seeing the ViewSonic monitor driver as malware): No change in behavior.  (I reinstalled MSE again afterwards.)

Restore the system to a restore point from a few days prior (when I know the monitor had been working fine): No change in behavior.

Reboot into Windows Safe Mode: This actually did get the logon screen, and then the Windows desktop, to display properly on the primary monitor.  I was even able to increase the screen resolution from the safe mode default (1024x768, I think) back to the native resolution of 1680x1050.  I was not able to use dual-monitor display, though; the Screen Resolution dialog only detected the primary monitor while in Safe Mode.  Rebooting again (back into normal mode) brought me back to square one.

Uninstall the video driver (then reboot): After rebooting, the behavior was similar to safe mode; the primary monitor worked, but not the secondary.  Upon reinstalling the NVidia video driver and rebooting once more, it was again back to square one.

Reseat the video card (with the PC powered off, then boot back up): No change in behavior.

Unplug the secondary monitor (leaving only the primary monitor plugged in) (then reboot): This didn’t help.  I still got, after rebooting, the BIOS information visible, the graphical Windows 7 logo visible, then blank screen / sleeping monitor.

Swap the ports that the two monitors’ DVI cables were plugged into, then reboot: This actually caused me not to get anything display on either monitor.  I changed it back afterward.

Check BIOS settings: I didn’t notice anything unusual, or any settings that I could change that might be likely to fix the problem.  I ended up leaving everything alone.

Finally, after all that, I hit upon a good solution: I replaced the video card.  Specifically, (after powering both machines down and unplugging them, of course), I pulled the GeForce 6800 GT from my primary machine and set it aside; then, I pulled the GeForce GT 430 from my HTPC (leaving that PC with just the motherboard’s onboard audio/video), and installed that card in my primary PC; then I booted the primary PC back up.  After doing that, and letting Windows install the NVidia display driver, both monitors came up with no problem.

So even though I had been pretty convinced initially that I was looking at a software problem, probably a driver problem of some kind (given that the primary monitor worked fine at boot time, and even displayed the graphical windows logo, and also worked fine in Safe Mode), the problem apparently was that my GeForce 6800 GT decided to (partially) fail on me.  It was actually my lovely wife that made the astute observation that the fact that I had been fairly recently running that card at a scorching hot 100+ degrees C probably hadn’t helped matters!

Note that I don’t recommend that anyone else who encounters this issue (and comes across this blog post via a search) run out and spend $$$ to replace your video card as your first option.  In researching this issue online during the course of the troubleshooting, I did run across some reports from others of this same problem (screen goes blank after displaying the Windows logo during boot) who were able to solve their issue by doing one of the other steps that I tried, such as uninstalling and reinstalling video drivers.

For the time being, I’m in good shape with my workaround.  The lower-end but newer GeForce GT 430 is actually almost as good a video card as the original 6800 GT; and the HTPC can play TV and movies fine with the onboard video.  I guess this gives me something to put on my birthday list for my birthday coming up later this year!