Zolon

Hey guys,

My girlfriend recently upgraded her system from her on-board card (Was a nVidia 5500FX... if I remember right.) to an MSI n9400 1 gig card. Things were fine, except she got the same thing that would happen after while of her playing games... the game would freeze or the graphics would glitch up (various graphical garbling and such), and she'd have to restart. So we downloaded the latest drivers from MSI, which (Though she didn't tell me it said this) were older then the nVidia ones.

One thing I'll note real quick is that we live apart from eachother as I left for school and she resides at home, so I don't actually have access to the system.

Anyway, she installed the drivers, rebooted. Windows went through a chkdsk on her, and she called me to find out what it was, but it started before we could stop it. It deleted some links to something labelled nVidia, she didn't read the full thing to me before it booted, and then it got to the starting Windows screen. It was fine until it got to the login screen, when it gives her a graphics out of range error.

Attempts to load from last known good config, safe mode and safe mode+net have resulted in the same error.

I'm more of an advanced user (Have built my own systems) but she's more novice than I, so some advanced functions are a little troublesome. She actually had a friend come over and install the hardware into her computer, so I'm not sure of everything that was done to the full extent. However, if safe mode, LKGC and normal boot aren't working, what can we do?

Zolon

Just to add some information, the monitor is a Dell E228WFP.

Zolon

Nobody has any ideas?

elf

Well there are things that can be done, but perhaps not by a novice user. You haven't mentioned whether or not you tried VGA mode yet. I'm assuming the result will be similar to the safe mode result, but it's worth a shot.

If it does not work we will need to look for another way in. You said that her PC has an onboard video card right? If so, you should be able to remove the newer MSI n9400 and let windows load up with the onboard card. If you can get the PC up and running with the onboard card then you should be able to remove the drivers that messed everything up to begin with.

As for the freezing during games, that sounds more like a hardware problem than a software problem. Now what is causing the problems will require some troubleshooting. It could be an unpowered power supply, overheating CPU/GPU, or faulty RAM (maybe even a failing harddrive, though unlikely). Regardless, it is probably not caused by the drivers

dai

boot from the onboard
in the device manager disable the onboard
if the card is listed uninstall it
turn the computer off
install the card
change the video cable from the onboard to the card
reboot into the bios
check to see if you can disable the onboard in there and set it to detect agp or pcie first
save and exit the bios tapping f8 and choose vga mode
when windows finishes booting
disable a/virus
install your drivers for the card
reboot the computer

what power supply
brand
wattage

Zolon

Okay, so some new developments.

I managed to get her to boot from the onboard card, but the error persisted. So, sadly she decided to just do a complete restore, tossing out all her pictures that were on that computer (If I were there I could have at least popped the drive out and copied the contents, *Sigh*) restore worked fine, she's just installing chipset drivers now.

Thanks anyway, guys. Sounds to me like it was borked drivers that futstded with the OS, leaving it unbootable. Lovely stuff :)

I blame Chkdsk, personally.

grimx133

Too late now, but I'd of tried a repair install first. Keep it in mind in case there happens to be a next time.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm