trouble installing new graphics card

[terryZ]

i have an old gatway fx7024 pc running vista home premium. it came with a geforce 8800gt card installed.

to make a long story short ...

i bought a nvidia geforce 210 card to replace the 8800. however, when i try to boot up with the new card, the pc stalls at the gateway splash screen. i've never changed video cards in a pc before and am stumped.

any ideas?

thanks in advance.

[Train]

Why did you down grade to the 210??
http://www.hwcompare.com/893/geforce...eforce-gt-210/

You have to uninstall the 8800 drivers with the 8800 installed, then shutdown and swap the cards. Boot up and install drivers if needed.

[terryZ]

a little more backstory ...

whenever i installed the 8800 drivers, the pc would freeze up and show just a blank colored screen. i posted here about that but no one had any idea what the problem was. i decided to just get a new graphics card. i need this pc to run second life & world of warcraft as a backup pc. according to wow, the minimum graphics card necessary is the geforce 6800 and the recommended is the 8800gt. i told this to the sales associate at microcenter who recommended the 210.

i thought it was an upgrade.

i'm re-installing the card now. will let you know how it goes.

train, what would a good sub $50 card be for this? or is there none under $50? as i said, this is not my main pc, just a backup for emergencies.

[terryZ]

well, i've done this about 6 times already: disabled the 8800 driver. finally disabled and uninstalled. verified that i have a generic vga driver.

no change. still stuck at the gateway load screen with the new 210 card.

[Midknyte]

Next time, post a link to the old thread for reference.
http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...-drivers/page2

The fact that you are having problems with two different video cards could mean a bad motherboard or PSU. Did you try installing the 8800GT in a different computer to test it? What driver sets did you use?

That Microcenter sales guy needs to do some research. Just because a card is newer, that doesn't mean it's better. $50 is really really low if you want a decent gaming card.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3107.html

[Midknyte]

Did you ever upgrade to Win7 or not? If so, what version?

[terryZ]

Did you try installing the 8800GT in a different computer to test it? What driver sets did you use?

the only other computer i could do that with is my brand new (as of two months ago) one. i'd rather not tinker with it since it's still under warranty (this new system is having graphic problems too which is why i don't want to test the 8800 in it. 30% of the time when i start it up before i get to the login screen the monitors go black and i get a "no signal" message. but when i restart it's perfect. i'm planning on sending it back to ibuypower and using the older gateway while it's "in the shop". this is why i'd like the old one to have a working graphics card. nothing mind boggling, just a working one.).

i tried the 327.23 if i remember correctly. i've uninstalled it and removed it from the system so i can't look.

Did you ever upgrade to Win7 or not? If so, what version?

no upgrade. running vista home premium on this.

[Midknyte]

In your other thread, you mentioned upgrading to Win7. Hmm, and this was a fresh install of Vista, right?

Did you physically inspect the motherboard for bad caps? Look at the pics on the bottom right for examples.
http://www.badcaps.net/

So you want to keep the GT210? It's a major downgrade, so just be aware of that.
What drivers are you using on the GT210?

[terryZ]

sorry, midknyte, lots going on. the upgrades to 7 (including the xp vm) are on the machines at work. they've been going well, btw. thanks again for your help there!

this gateway is my old home machine. yes, this was a fresh vista install. when i got my new ibuypower machine, i decided to install fresh on the old gateway, get everything working fine and then put ot away as a backup but i could never get the 8800 drivers to work. it had been working fine before i did the reinstall tho.

i looked at the "bad cap" pictures but since i don't know what the difference is between a bad and good one, i don't know what i'm looking at or what to look for. sorry.

i can't get the gateway system to launch with the 210 in it to even check the drivers. the screen freezes on the gateway splash screen before i even get into windows.

as to the 210 vs 8800, as long as i can reasonably play wow & sl, i don't mind the downgrade.

ps. the gatewsy system DOES load and operate with the 8800 card even without the nvidia drivers. just can't play any games.

[Midknyte]

Bad caps are bulging or leaking. The tops should be flat and clean. This page might help more:
http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5

The 8800 has higher power draw, so it's probably not a PSU issue. If it was a video card problem, swapping it out should have fixed that.

i was getting the following error message as the complaint from windows: "display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered".

Here are some things you can try if you want to keep the 8800 (which is what I would do):
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...vlddmkm-Error/

as to the 210 vs 8800, as long as i can reasonably play wow & sl, i don't mind the downgrade.

You're probably going to have to lower a lot of settings to get games to play at a decent framerate.

Did you run any other diags on that system? Hard drive and memory diags? They seem to be ok, but it doesn't hurt to check.

[terryZ]

i followed your link, midknyte. even changed out all memory. nothing worked.

now my screen freezes when i try to open firefox.

uninstalled the 8800 driver. firefox is fine.

[Midknyte]

Did you check Event Viewer for errors?

Which driver sets did you use for the 8800? Are you still using the old drivers off the Gateway site?
VGA Driver NVIDIA 169.02 57.4 MB 07/26/2010
http://global-download.gateway.com/G...TEWAY&SC=PA_6G

Hmm. That set is actually from 2007.
You can try other sets from the following. Even Nvidia doesn't keep sets that old.
http://www.guru3d.com/files_category...vista_|_7.html

[terryZ]

i had been to gateway's page for the fx7024 (http://support.gateway.com/us/en/pro...umber=1015229R) to load drivers but didn't download that 169.02 driver because it said vga.

anyway, i did just now downloaded the 169.02. and rebooted. things look stable. no crashes. so far, so good.

i tried to boot to second life and world or warcraft. they no longer balk at the video driver like they did before but neither of them runs. they just freeze the system.

do i take the plunge and update the 8800 driver to the current version? or is there something i should do before?

EDIT: false positive there. i just tried to move a folder from a thumb drive to the C drive and the screen froze

[terryZ]

also, this is has happened twice now (can't figure out how to insert an image so i'll insert the url):

http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/...psc2f58f98.jpg

it returned to normal the first time, but it's been this way for over 1/2 hour. i'm getting worried for my monitor now

EDIT: i reconnected this monitor to my new pc. not back to normal. has all this somehow screwed up the monitor?

[Train]

Actually, it could have been the monitor the whole time.
Seen that on CRT monitors, but as yet, not on the newer monitors.