Several odd issues after installing new video card

[Arcas]

'Lo, everyone. First time poster, and it isn't even my issue. I'm trying to help my boyfriend, who happens to be quite long distance away, with the issues his new video card is having, but I'm at a loss, so I'll toss it out there for anyone who wants to take a crack.

His old card died, so he purchased a Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti. It is new. After installing it, he started to have issues with the computer freezing momentarily in WoW and crashing on occasion. He thought he had fixed it, (by reinstalling the driver,) but it's still having the issue. Tonight, he shut down his PC to take a look, make sure the hardware was in properly, and when he restarted, he was having even more issues.

Some of these include:

The computer insisting two monitors are hooked up, and saying, because of this, he cannot put the screen res about 800x600. He also says his monitor "uninstalled itself" and that it's now listing as "Generic PnP Monitor".
It also thinks it's a laptop. Also, as I type this, it apparently is insisting he download new drivers for this laptop, (but he hasn't.)

He is running:
AMD Athlon II X2 250 Processors 3.00 GHZ
2 gigs RAM
Vista
We know that his power supply is good enough for the card, since I made sure to check into that before advising the purchase.

Nothing in the tower is overheating.

Any odd thing that's posted here is hearsay from him, but maybe some of you can make sense of it.

Please help before he whines my eyes out, (as we're talking over MSN.)

Many thanks!

 

[Ritwik7]

Did he remove all drivers pertaining to his old video card before he installed the new ones? Be sure to check that. I would suggest he use Driver Sweeper to remove all drivers and start by installing afresh.

 

[Arcas]

He told me later on that he didn't originally remove them, but then, when he was
"fixing" it, he removed those drivers and the new one, and installed the new one fresh. Most of the odd issues seem to have fixed themselves, (although the all occurred after he installed the driver the second time,) but it's still asking him to download laptop drivers and saying that he has two monitors, (though his display appearance is proper now.) I will tell him to use the program and then reinstall the new driver again.

Thanks for your suggestion! I'll update on any changes.

 

[Arris]

It is saying 2 monitors and not just two graphics adapters? The dual headed (i.e. multiple output) cards will often list as two devices.

I'd try another uninstall of drivers as others have advised then run DriverSweeper to remove any old driver files that the Nvidia uninstall doesn't remove. Let us know if there are still problems after that.