So I had a major power outage today.
The power suddenly came on and off and my surge protector did its job but my power back-up battery didn't (old Belkin obviously needs replacing!)

When I tried to start the COMPUTER again only one of the two monitors was recognized. I am on a Windows XP and I use an ATI graphics card to run 2 monitors that allows me to scroll and run my mouse and windows from one screen to another screens.

Because it was not recognizing the first monitor and the monitor was black I went to ATI display manager in order to enable it using the second monitor which was working fine. I clicked on the enable this monitor feature which is how you add a monitor to display(I have done this the same way many times before). I also DECIDED to make the first monitor (the monitor that was not working) my primary monitor. (This last part was the kiss of death!)

Now neither monitor is working!!! The first monitor (which wasn't working initially) is still black and the second monitor is blacked out /more like dark and I can only see the cursor. I can also scroll the cursor from one moitor to another because when I scroll all the way away from the screen the cursor disappears(I'm sure it would be visible on the first monitor if the first monitor wre working!)

I did the only sensible thing I could think of so I HARD rebooted my computer from the main power button. (A soft reboot ctrl/alt/del did not work)

Both screens come on successfully and both say Windows XP in the initial stages of the reboot. But once it is rebooted the first monitor is still black and the second is dark with the cursor.

I am at a loss as to what to do next.

I hope you can help. Thank you so much in advanceFrom your description, it appears that the monitors are functioning briefly at the boot. Disconnect the secondary monitor & work to get one monitor working. It could be that the driver software became corrupted in the power surge. Reinstall it, and start over, & hope the graphics card is not damaged.Thanks so much for your response.
Is there something I can do in the reboot process through the bios (not sure I am calling this the right thing.) I am referring to interrupting the boot process and booting manually or doing something that way?
Thank you so much!

I hope I can do it this way because I am not sure which monitor to even shut off firstThe primary monitor is usually the connector closest to the motherboard. You could also try booting to Safe Mode, tap F8 at start of Windows boot. You could also try entering the CMOS Setup (BIOS), what ever monitor displays is the Primary.So after trying to fix this on my own for FOUR hours you managed to get my off monitor on 30 secs.
OK..I took your suggestion and unplugged my monitor (took a 50/50 chance ..I did it before reading your last note)
So the monitor that was completely blacked out before and not working at all booted successfully. Should I re-install the software from here? (Hope I have it) or should I tery plugging in the second monitor again.?You can try it, now that you know which is the Primary port. May not need driver reinstall.Tried just plugging the moitor ack in and restarting. The same problem persists. I am going to go back to a single monitor and try to re-install the software as per your first suggestion. Wish me luck!OK..the re-install worked!
Thank you so much!!!

For some reason the display manager is recognizing the two monitors as monitors 1 and 4 instead of 1 and 2 (I am temporarily using two monitors instead of 4 as I am in between home offices. ) I reorganized the order of the monitors on the software so that 1 and 4 are set up next to each other so that I can scroll between the 2 smoothly. I can live with it this way but I am wondering if tere is an easy fix worth trying you may know about. Is there an assigning monitor feature? The number of monitors is based on how many display ports you have on the ATI graphics card. The ATI software should control everything. I have nVidia, so can't help you with how ATI works.