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bkohler81 · 11-20-2008, 05:57 PM

okay... so I know this has been dealt with several times on here and many other sites. I PROMISE you guys that I searched around for the past three days to find assistance. This is my last resort... I need HELP!

I have an HP Pavillion desktop
AMD Athlon 64x2 dual core 4200+ 2.19ghz 1 GB RAM
MS XP Media Center SP3
about 3 years old, has an AGP ATI Radeon X300 Series video card
card only has one vga and an s-video
I wanted to run dual monitors so I picked up a cheap-o S3 trio 64V2 pci card that gave me an additional vga slot for an extra monitor

The pc store guy told me to install the card, boot up and windows will recognize the card and install the driver's automatically. I did this the boot screen and BIOS screen showed up on secondary monitor immediately, then after a few seconds switched back to my primary and booted up just fine. I watched as the driver's installed and went in to configure the dual monitor setup. Everything worked fine. I had both displays running perfect. Well I re-booted the computer, and entered an endless cycle of "boot screens > reboot" over and over. Finally I manually shut it down, restarted and got it to boot into safe mode. I couldn't figure out what to do at that point so I tried to re-boot again. It booted and gave me the options "boot safe mode" or "last know good configuration". I booted up "last known..." and it worked sans secondary monitor. I'm afraid to reboot at this point because I don't want it to not start up.

OH YEAH, I went thru this same cycle a few days ago where I changed something in the BIOS and could never get my comp to boot up. I ended up having to pull the battery to the mobo to reset the bios and had to reinstall windows. SO NEEDLESS TO SAY... im a little nervous at this point.

So here I am, computer booted. Both cards installed. Drivers for both installed. only primary monitor on... someone please HELP!

Thank you

Bret

11-20-2008, 05:57 PM	#1 (permalink)
bkohler81 Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 2 OS: win xp sp3	another second video card problem thread okay... so I know this has been dealt with several times on here and many other sites. I PROMISE you guys that I searched around for the past three days to find assistance. This is my last resort... I need HELP! I have an HP Pavillion desktop AMD Athlon 64x2 dual core 4200+ 2.19ghz 1 GB RAM MS XP Media Center SP3 about 3 years old, has an AGP ATI Radeon X300 Series video card card only has one vga and an s-video I wanted to run dual monitors so I picked up a cheap-o S3 trio 64V2 pci card that gave me an additional vga slot for an extra monitor The pc store guy told me to install the card, boot up and windows will recognize the card and install the driver's automatically. I did this the boot screen and BIOS screen showed up on secondary monitor immediately, then after a few seconds switched back to my primary and booted up just fine. I watched as the driver's installed and went in to configure the dual monitor setup. Everything worked fine. I had both displays running perfect. Well I re-booted the computer, and entered an endless cycle of "boot screens > reboot" over and over. Finally I manually shut it down, restarted and got it to boot into safe mode. I couldn't figure out what to do at that point so I tried to re-boot again. It booted and gave me the options "boot safe mode" or "last know good configuration". I booted up "last known..." and it worked sans secondary monitor. I'm afraid to reboot at this point because I don't want it to not start up. OH YEAH, I went thru this same cycle a few days ago where I changed something in the BIOS and could never get my comp to boot up. I ended up having to pull the battery to the mobo to reset the bios and had to reinstall windows. SO NEEDLESS TO SAY... im a little nervous at this point. So here I am, computer booted. Both cards installed. Drivers for both installed. only primary monitor on... someone please HELP! Thank you Bret