TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

I had recently bought a ATi Radeon 9000 64MB DDR PCI Video Card online to play a game on my computer. First when I put it in a slot the resolution was low and everything was huge and when I tried to change the resolution in the control panel it didn't change anything. Then I installed the software that came with it thinking that might solve the problem and once it got done it asked me to restart. So I restarted and then it went past the computer loading screen then got stuck on a black screen and it wouldn't get passed it. So I opened up my computer and put it in a different slot, this time it started up.. got to my desktop and everything was still huge but my start bar was gone. Restarted again.. same deal. The card came with a cord, one end hooks up to the card and the other has a yellow head (Looks like those cords you would plug into your TV: Red, Yellow, and White). But I have no idea where that would plug into inside my computer.. maybe thats the problem? Any suggestions?

My Computer Specs are:
Windows XP - Home Edition
1984 RAM
~2.2 GHz Processor

your card has an rca plug?

I don't think the RCA plug has anything to do with it, thats for connecting your video card to a TV.

If the cord isn't the problem then what is?

Do you have any other Graphics Cards to test out to see if it isn't the system's fault?

No, I don't think its the systems fault its maybe something I'm not doing right but I can't figure out what

Have you tried going into safe mode? And also, what OS are you using? I'm looking for drivers.

Windows XP, I haven't tried that yet.. I will

Go into safe mode, uninstall your other drivers (Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs>Look for an ATI Graphics Driver of a sort or ATI catalyst>Uninstall>Reboot)

When it reboots, download and install these drivers.

Okay, well I did that. When I tried to install the drivers it said it couldn't find the hardware. So I put the card in and tried it and it gave me 3 errors.

1. The minimum .NET framework version required is 2.0

2. INF error video driver not found

3. Setup couldn't be completed, try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA driver before running setup

These messages appeared in various parts of the installation process. I installed the .NET framework 2.0 from the Microsoft website and I read that to fix that VGA error I need to remove the old drivers "completely" with the ATI removal tool.. So i did that and removed it. Then tried the set up and got the same errors.

So now im stuck again... any suggestions?

Try using an even older driver, the 6.5 version. Click here. I know the link for your card takes you to version 6.11 but if you read the release notes for that version, the Radeon 9000 isn't listed as supported. I'm not sure where the error lies but nonetheless, give the older driver a try. Also, install only the driver. Skip the Catalyst Control Center for now and the WDM driver. If you want, you can add the CCC later.

None of this is working, I'm going to guess this card doesn't want to work with Windows XP, any ideas for a low cost graphics card compatible with Windows XP?