All is black except Icons and pointer

Hello,
I have what appears to be a different kind of black screen problem. I am running xp with sp 3 and after bootup all is black except my icons and pointer. I can not see anything else, all windows come up black and unreadable. I was attempting to configure a hookup to a second monitor (TV) and believe I have messed up the settings. I have a seperate video card and tried resorting back to the onboard but the same problem persits. Safe mode, VGA mode do not help either. Can I adjust display settings outside of windows? Any ideas? Will I have to reinstall windows?