I have a Hercules 9800 Pro vid card and it's worked very well up until this point. I'll just explain what happened:

The problem started while I was playing a game and the system locked up. We are talking whole system freeze, not just game crashing. I would reboot and try the game again. Things would work fine for a few minutes, then it would happen again. A third time I went back into the game, which as you can guess, locked up a third time. Well, this time the system never recovered. I ended up deducing that my motherboard had crapped out. (tested by throwing in a backup board I had lying around). Well, I bought a new Mobo and proceeded to install windows again. Things went smoothly till I installed the video drivers for my 9800 pro. The screen would go black after the XP splash screen and it would eventually just restart itself. I can get into Safe Mode no problem. I cannot install any video drivers without the system going black after the Splash Screen. The stock drivers that XP loads are fine, but anytime I load any ATI drivers, the black screen comes back. If I unistall the ATI drivers, I can boot into normal mode just fine (just no video drivers installed). I tried using older drivers, modified drivers, and the newest ones. All have the same effect. Anyone know what this problem is or what causes it?

-Short version of story, Video card works while no drivers are installed. When drivers are installed, I get a back screen after the XP splash screen.

Any suggestions would be great! Thanks!

System Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 1700+ @2200
Asus A7N8X-E deluxe (previous board that died:A7N8X Deluxe)
Hercules 9800 Pro 128 (currently using Geforce4 Ti4200)
NEC 2500a dvd-rw
Asus 16x dvd-rom
1 gig Samsung PC3500
2x120gig Western Digital HDD

Have you tried changing any of the video or timing settings in the BIOS?

Are you getting the drivers from ATI's site or Hercules' web site?

I haven't messed with anything in bios pertaining to video settings. I've been getting my drivers from ATI's site. I just don't know if this card has gone bad, or it's a setting or what. Something to note though, This seems to happen to another system when i put the card into it. First it will load windows fine, find new hardware, and after video drivers are installed and system restarted, black screen happens. It was very hot that day and the system had been running for a while, could this be caused by heat damage? My motherboard perished, the card might have been damaged along with it, i'm just trying to find out for sure before i drop another 150 bones on a new card.

It does sound like your 9800 could've gotten damaged..

Do you have a friend you can borrow an ATI card from to see if you get the same problem? (Pref a 9800pro or as similar as possible to the one you have now)

I bought the sapphire radeon 9800 pro over a year ago and it worked alright with gaming for a month or too and then I got the black screens as well and vpu recoveries and such. I've tried almost all the catalyst drivers, but still no luck. I might be buying a new card. I haven't been using this system for gaming even though I bought it for that reason because I didn't want to put in more money . I've heard this problem has been happening to many who own the 9800, now that a year has passed and that I'm looking for new hardware solutions. Hopefully you'll figure it out and post a follow up.

OLOLOLOLOOL i had exactly same problem but with a 9700 pro and it still happens when i try to install new drivers. here what i did.

reinstall windows with Nvidia Card in.
update ALL drivers and get every update you can think of (accept nvidia drivers)
reboot ETC:
shut down pc install ati card.
if the black screen error comes back simply press F8 in the boot process to enter in boot options, then select "boot with last settings that worked".

if all else fails i know a good junk yard

I am having EXACTLY the same problem and thought it might be my mobo. I replaced it (with a different brand board) and it worked fine (2 months) until one day I had to reboot and then I ran into the same cycle of having to uninstall the drivers to get out of the black screen. There must be a reasonable explanation we're overlooking unless it boils down to our cards going bad. Mine is an X800 pro and I've reloaded drivers over and over. You'd think that this would have happened to someone who would definitively know what the problem is. Sorry I don't have a good answer but at least you know there is someone out there as frustrated as you. Maybe we'll get a more definitive follow-up response. Incidentally, I did install a new card (low end) and the card worked fine but it doesn't make sense that our card works for a while then doesn't. I also thought my problem occurred each time I had done a critical update but when I use system restore behind the date it doesn't resolve the problem. One other hypothesis I had was that I was running my monitor at too high a refresh rate but that wasn't it either. Let me know if you figure it out and I'll do the same.
Jim

Aint it annoying....

i ended up selling the computer. lol