How to Fix a Black Screen after Installing ATI Catalyst DriversAfter upgrading ATI Catalyst drivers you encounter a black screen from which you can do nothing, even though everything else seems to work.
I have encountered this on Windows and Linux (Ubuntu) machines, having installed the latest ATI Catalyst drivers on a fresh OS install.
In Windows, safe mode works normally; you can uninstall the driver and reboot to normal mode, where you can install the drivers again or a different driver version of the driver. In Linux, you can Ctrl + Alt + F1 to the terminal and amend the X11.conf file to revert to the previous driver and re-install.
However, this didn't make any difference; I still ended up with a black, unresponsive screen each time.
The solution: Have a TV plugged into an HDMI port? Turn the TV on and switch to HDMI input. What do you see? That's right; the driver defaulted the primary display to the TV, and the monitor showed the secondary display, a black desktop colour. You can move the mouse over and open the display properties to set the monitor to the primary.
Several days were wasted fixing this one.
