Driver installation & Black screen?

[Christina26]

Ok so my old vid card crapped out and I had to replace it. Np or so I thought. I bought the XFX Radeon HD 4650 (on the box it also says "AGP 8x" and "1GB DDR2").

I get the thing home, remove the old video card and it's drivers, then install the new one, and as soon as I install the drivers for the new card my computer won't start. It takes about 8-15 reboots in order to get past the black screen. I have uninstalled the drivers, cleaned them in safe mode, restarted again for good measure and then reinstalled the drivers from the disk. I have tried this same procedure several times, I have tried using the drivers from the XFX website, but according to them the card is too new and therefore the most recent drivers are not yet compatible with it.

I have a 450watt Mushkin PS, motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X2.0, Processor AMD Athlon XP 2800+ MMX 3D Now ~2.1GHz, 2048MB Ram, and I'm running Win XP Pro.

The place I bought the card from has replaced the card itself once, so I know that is not the problem. There is a message when you install the drivers from the disk that basically says it was never tested with windows and they don't know if it's all that stable...I have contacted XFX, they say the drivers are fine with windows.

So now here I sit, I have tried everything you can think of. When I bought this video card I made sure it was compatible with the motherboard because I know that my computer is a few years old (my bf built it a few years ago for gaming).

I have installed the video card correctly, bf was watching me and he's the one who builds our computers. The place I bought the card from basically says "bring in the computer and pay us to make it work for you". Does anyone know what is wrong?

 

[raybay]

Look on the motherboard manufacturer website to assure that you have the latest Chipset drivers... there are sometimes two for some Asus boards.
Describe how your old video card crapped out? Perhaps your motherboard is going to the happy hunting ground?
But I suspect the problem will be found in the motherboard manual at the ASUS site.
The big mystery: What did the place where you bought the card say when the second card didn't work either?: Did they not offer to give your money back?

 

[Christina26]

I play WoW and when I would be playing there would be lines all across the screen, for ex: trees in the bakround would be connected to my toon graphically with a line or several, I don't know how to explain it very well but trust me, vid card was def dying. Also, there was a little dot that followed my mouse everywhere when browsing through web pages. My screen saver was customized with words that scroll across the screen and again, they would stutter and have random lines. When I can get my computer to start, my picture is perfect. Everything runs like a dream...it's just getting it past the black screen that seems to be the problem.

The place I bought it from just replaced it a couple days ago, the first reboot after the driver installation worked fine, just every time after that I have to have my fingers crossed. I have to call them back again to see what they say (aside from bring it in and pay us)

I will go to the ASUS site and see about updating the chipset drivers. I have never updated the chipset drivers personally (that's not to say bf hasn't come on here and done it). How do I know which drivers I have for the chipset?

 

[raybay]

ASUS will tell you if you need any... showing the latest updates... Sometimes they are updated as part of Windows updates in many machines... don't know about that one... But don't know how you could do it without being able to see the screen.

 

[Christina26]

It seems as though windows just stops loading, I get the windows loading screen, and then boom, black screen...I can't hear it loading up, the mouse isn't visible, it just stops loading. I do have a legit copy of windows with all the latest updates. I'm on the Asus site now looking for drivers.

I'm on the computer now, like I said, when I can get it to load, it works perfectly.

 

[Christina26]

My motherboard must be way outdated, I can't find anything in relation to my motherboard on the Asus site. Windows was installed about 2.5 years ago, and the drivers and all that would have had to have been installed at the same time. I know the tech that did for us had a hard time finding the drivers then, I can only assume it would be next to impossible now.

 

[raybay]

One of the most common causes is a failed hard drive, whether new or not Next is a corrupt Windows install.

Those drivers are still avaiable in the ASUS archives.