Help! Issue with graphics card

PolyphemusPolyphemus Inside my head a lot of the time...
edited May 2005 in Hardware
I began installation of a new graphics card today, and the "instructions" told me to delete the drivers for the current card, then shut down, insert the new card, reboot, and install when windows booted up. Problem is, windows won't boot.

I think it's because it's reaching the part of the sequence where it would be loading the drivers for the graphics card, and there is now nothing there. I am about to use a downloaded XP boot disk to restore my system to the starting point, unless someone here has a better idea.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give, it's very much appreciated.

Comments

  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited May 2005
    Windows has generic 'Default' drivers that it automaticly uses if no graphics drivers are found for the card. Did you do the normal Windoes sutdown after deleting the old drivers? Is that all you deleted? What kind of error did you get or was there nothing at all? Also, what was your old card and what is the new one on what board and bios?
  • PolyphemusPolyphemus Inside my head a lot of the time...
    edited May 2005
    The card that I had was a 64mb 3dFX Voodoo 3, and the new one is an ATI Ratheon 9250, 128mb. They're both PCI cards, and I I don't know what kind of motherboard it is.

    Yes, it is all I deleted, and I copied the .dll and .sys files to disk before shutting down the computer, and it was a normal system shutdown, no Ctrl+Alt+Delete or anything. I booted the system back up, and just like it was doing with the new card when I was running that by itself, it clipped out midway through loading windows.

    If I could find a way to put the driver files back into the c:\windows\system32 folder without needing to load windows, then everything would be hunkey-dorey. But I can't seem to find a way to do that. I tried re-arranging the boot order, but I need to put A:\ before the hard disk loads, and I can't access the hard disk before it loads. So I'm essentially stuck with just an A:\ drive, or a computer that's shorting out on me. I'm in quite a pickle.

    P.S. That's a beautiful system you've got spec'd out there. Awesome.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited May 2005
    I would suggest doing a 'repair' install of windows.


    To do a Repair Install:

    1) Make sure the bios is set so your cdrom drive is the first boot device.

    2) Put your WinXP CD in the drive, start the computer, then watch for a line like "Press any key to boot from CD".

    3) Continue as if it were a clean install, until it gets to the point where it finds your existing Windows installation.

    4) Pick the option to repair the current Windows installation, not add another one.

    5) The rest is automatic.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited May 2005
    mtgoat gave you some good advice. The only thing I'd suggest is that you might try booting in Safe Mode first and see what your Device Manager looks like regarding Display Adapters. :)
  • PolyphemusPolyphemus Inside my head a lot of the time...
    edited May 2005
    I think what I have to do is to disable the onboard monitor through the system BIOS. I don't know how this is done. Thanks for the replies, all. :)
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited May 2005
    Polyphemus wrote:
    I think what I have to do is to disable the onboard monitor through the system BIOS. I don't know how this is done...
    Sometimes it's as easy as disabling it in the bios; other times you have to move a jumper on the MB.

    What MB do you have? If we can find a manual I'm sure we could point you in the right direction. :)
  • PolyphemusPolyphemus Inside my head a lot of the time...
    edited May 2005
    profdlp wrote:
    Sometimes it's as easy as disabling it in the bios; other times you have to move a jumper on the MB.

    What MB do you have? If we can find a manual I'm sure we could point you in the right direction. :)

    Again, thank you all very much. It turned out to be a stupid question. I had thought that I had disabled the onboard monitor in the bios. There were two different selections, auto and onboard. The Auto said that it would search for any add-on device, and if it found one, it would automatically bypass the onboard monitor and go directly into windows. Then I turned on the DAG snooping, which added additional support for this. All I had to do was go into device manager and disable the default intel 82850 graphics card, or whatever it was exactly, and I was jet set.

    Now I'm on to the problem of software issues with Neverwinter Nights, it keeps on cutting me out of the game. But I probably have the graphics on a little bit too high. Again, thanks a lot. It's refreshing to get onto an online community that is actually willing to help people without first pointing out their ignorance. :)
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