Black screen with many white exclamation points / marks on boot... #

was due to a failing EVGA e-GeForce 8800GT video card. Pulled the card and exclamation points were gone for good.

black screen with white exclamation points

black screen with white exclamation points

Could not find any definitive information or solution on the web, though there were a few similar complaints:

Vista Grapics/Boot Failure
"screen shows a black background and a lot of white exclamation points"
Exclamation points & random characters during boot-up
"black screen filled with a ton of white exclamation points"

/misc | Dec 29, 2009

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