Windows 7 Monitor problems

[Luxury]

Hi guys,

I've tried to put my problem in a neat way below.

Current problem:
After the "Welcome" screen comes up for ~5 seconds, my monitor turns black. It is still receiving a signal. Sometimes, it reboots after a while.
Windows 7 does not seem to recognize my monitors (see 'background' below for more)

Origin:
I believe the problem is between Windows and my monitors/their drivers

Booting
1) Normal boot, I always get the above problem
2) Booting in 'low resolution mode', I do NOT get this problem IF the nvidia drivers are NOT installed. otherwise same problem
3) Safe mode, I never have this problem

Background
I had the same problem in XP, and it was fixed after I installed my monitor's drivers.
I cannot install the drivers in 7.
There is no 'Monitors' in Device Manager, let alone any 'Generic PnP Monitor'.
Windows Update does find the 971p (one of my monitors) drivers, but they do not work. But this seems to suggest 7 at least somehow recognizes my monitor.
971p is listed as supported on MS' site ("64 bit supported, no action needed")

Specs:
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
ASRock K8Upgrade-1689 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
2GB DDR333
GeForce 7600GS 128MB

Monitors:
Samsung Syncmaster 971p (DVI)
Viewsonic VA903b (VGA)
(Only have one plugged in at a time)

Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[Tmagic650]

You can go to Nvidia's support website and download the Windows 7 64-bit driver for the GeForce 7600GS... This is not a monitor problem. It is a video card driver problem

 

[Luxury]

I wish it was that easy; In fact, my computer works better without the nvidia drivers since then I can still boot into 'low resolution mode'. I'm sure the nvidia drivers themselves are fine; I had an almost identical problem in XP (with nvidia drivers seemingly messing stuff up) which was all fixed when I could install the monitor drivers.

 

[Tmagic650]

Monitor "drivers" only identify the attached monitor to Windows . I use a Samsung SyncMaster 245bw monitor, and it's "driver" only identifies SyncMaster 245bw to my OS (Windows 7) I know this may be hard to understand. If a monitor is listed as plug & play as your monitors and mine are, they will be identified by Windows when they are attached. You need a separate video driver for your video card or motherboard video. This video driver doesn't care what your monitor is. The default vertical refresh rate for LCD monitors is usually 60Hz

 

[dividebyzero]

I believe Tmagic is correct.
The reason the card appears to work without drivers is because at low resolution 800x640 and 8-bit colour, the card is acting more like a pass-through than as a graphics card. Once you attempt to raise the resolution and/or the colour to 16/32 bit this will require the card's GPU and Vram to become active which it cannot do without drivers.
Question: Have you changed monitors while the system is running ? I have seen instances where this has happened and the device manager has "lost" the device (monitor, mouse, kb).
My suggestion would be to:
1. Download the latest whql nvidia x64 driver (195.62) UNLESS the card is branded, in which case download the appropriate driver from the manufacturers website.
2. Download the latest monitor driver.
3. Download Driver Sweeper- thoughtfully provided by Techspot here https://www.techspot.com/downloads/4266-driver-sweeper.html
4. Run driver sweeper to eliminate any earlier nVidia driver.
5. Reboot and install the video card driver you downloaded earlier.
6. Install your monitor driver (after re-booting if required).
7. If you still have an incompatibility then check to see if the monitor parameters- resolution, refresh rate etc. are in line with the graphics card settings

Note: nVidia's WHQL drivers DO NOT WORK in conjuction with many branded ( most noteably Gigabyte) FX5xxx, 6xxx and 7xxx series cards.

@ Tmagic - too fast for me !
Non CRT monitors as you say should show up in the Device Manager by their name, also in the nVidia Contol Panel and should be evident by rt clicking the desktop > Screen resolution > Screen should show the monitors model name, resolution and orientation. Clicking on "Advanced settings" will show the refresh rate.