Video drivers failed to initialize

[sethbest]

My windows xp home will not boot in regular or safe mode, or any system restore modes, it gets to windows loading bar then gives me a blue "video drivers failed to initialize" error after which i reset.

This happened after i tried to install updated drivers for my nforce 6800 mobo (may have been the wrong drivers). I installed another version of windows and copied over the working drivers from the system32/drivers directory, but this did not fix the problem.

I read that this problem can be related to a corrupted beep.dll file, but that file was replaced when i copied over the drivers and still same starting error.

When i attempted to run in vga mode i got an error that system32\drivers\nvatabus.dll was missing, upon running repair and the above mentioned driver copy this error stopped occuring and i just go ther regular failed to initialize error.

any suggestions on reseting to default video drivers long enough to install the proper ones through the install program on the right os?

There seem to be some underlieng overheating issues in this system also but they may or may not be related, though they do seem to account for the random freezes that occur when performing high end or fat32 functions.

ive run memtests and they came back clean (except that one of my sticks is named v7v7v7v7v7v7, or something like that), and ive reset bios to failsafes.

the option of installing windows over the old windows remains, but i would rather not lose all my profile information and info that is access restricted to that profile, as well as go through installing all of my programs again.

any help is appreciate, thanks.

 

[kimsland]

Hmm This one looks a bit difficult. So I can understand that you have resorted to here

Lets get through the basics

You tried Memtest but did you actually do Memtest for 7 Passes?
I think it would be best to run CheckDisk from the Windows CD Recovery Console chkdsk C:/f (More info further down this page)
You can even run System Restore from Safe Mode Command Prompt %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe (if you can get there)

You could also try a Windows Repair (although it may fail with those incorrect drivers , not sure..)

Another option would be to remove your HardDrive and back it up in another computer (although you want to avoid this step!) And install Windows clean

 

[sethbest]

I'll download memtest (i just used the one built into my benchmarking tool before), and give that a try, and i have gotten into windows repair prompt where i tried chkdsk but it said that the drive didnt need it, but ill force run it this time and see if that helps at all.

Sound's like your confirming my concerns that ill just have to build a new os and profile.

thanks for the suggestions

 

[sethbest]

memtest and chkdsk came back with no errors.

Is it possible, or even advisable, to copy over the old registry from xp home to xp pro? that would fix my installing programs issues, but I dont know if that would work, or even if it would help, might just carry the old problems over.

 

[kimsland]

No if you were going to decide on that approach I would first recommend a Windows Repair

 

[sethbest]

So windows repair did not work, once it finished its first restart and tried to load the gui setup it would give me the same error, so i deleted the os and reinstalled, but that lost all of my info, so i wil probably just use my xp pro, already begun the long haul of reinstalling and re updated a few apps.

Thanks for the help kimsland, seems to me that the more adept i become with pc repair over the years the more i tend to screw up my own system. Guess thats just the nature of the beast.

 

[kimsland]

Yes this is the process of steps of the want-to-be tech

1. Does not touch any program other than basic operation
2. Starts meddling with program settings causing faults that cannot be repaired by them
3. Starts learning how to fix their own faults, but continues meddling
4. Finds that he cannot fix some faults and asks for support
5. Learns how to fix faults previously unknown
6. Continues finding more and more faults they cannot fix, and must learn how to
7. Re-installs Windows clean, removing any alterations ever done
8. Finds Windows loads much quicker than it ever did
9. Stops meddling with any settings
10. Does not touch any program other than basic operation !!

All that, just to get back at the start?

Goodluck, you are presently at step #7, you're very close now

Thanks for the update :grinthumb