[ecks]

Okay I just got totally new everything for my computer. I got D865GBF Intel MainBoard, Pentium 4 3.0ghz processor, with 1024 ram. i installed it all and everything is perfect, until i get to the vid card. i bought a verto geforce fx 5200 ultra 128mb. and when i try to install the drivers it goes through the whole process and reboots, comes into windows updates the driver and then needs to reboot again, then this time when it reboots it shows the windows loading screen and after that when you think it is gonna go into windows it shows a black screen with a blinking underscore at the top left. and it just sits there.

any ideas on the the heck is wrong? i installed the drivers from the cd and it did this, so then i downloaded the drivers off nvidias site and it still does it.


HELP

THanks!

 

[Luck]

You eliminated the drivers as the culprit. Maybe the card is defective. I would return it and get the same one and if that one also has the same problem then you know its not the video card at all.

 

[clintfan]

You have Win98, right? This is a fairly normal display during bootup, but it's supposed to be transient. After seeing this Windows should progress to the teal screen and continue with startup. One thing I did is embedded an ECHO ON statement in my Autoexec.bat file, so instead of a blank screen I'd see some progress. Personally I would say, it's probably not your video card... it's doing a great job of displaying a blinking cursor.

Just be ready... it could be any number of other problems in Windows, such as with your networking. FOR EXAMPLE, on my Win98SE, I found it would hang during boot unless it saw a Link signal on the LAN. So I had to use a hub, which powers up along with the computer, such that a Link signal would always be there. I think that this sort of thing can also be caused by some sort of DLL conflict within Windows, something you installed recently which is conflicting with something else.

Have you tried booting in SAFE mode? I'm just curious if that works. It will load way fewer DLL's in this mode, just the minimum.

During bootup, just after POST, it will say something like "Starting Windows 98". Then immediately you hit F8. A menu will appear. Arrow-down to choose SAFE mode and hit Enter.


Only thing is, once you're in SAFE mode, I don't have any other advice for you of what to do next... it's just a data point: it would confirm your computer isn't toally dead. I think the last time I had issues like this, I called Microsoft and paid the $35 for help, and they fixed it over the phone; well worth the $$.

I think Win98 may also still have a Bootlog feature. I think what you would do is bring up the menu like you would do to enter SAFE mode, but instead choose Command Prompt Only. This puts you into DOS. Then from this DOS prompt you would type,

WIN  /B

and Windows will try to boot, but will hang as you said. But it will also deposit a BOOTLOG.TXT file in your C: root folder. What you would then do is again Boot to DOS again, and print that file via

more < c:\bootlog.txt
or
type c:\bootlog.txt

From the logfile you may be able to determine the last thing Windows was trying to do, and that may lead you to what the problem is.

Hope this helps,

-clintfan

 

[Locke Digitalus]

I think clintfan pretty much covered everything. I have this same card installed on my system at work, and it works fine so long as overclocking is disabled (via a jumper on the motherboard). I tend to agree with clintfan, it sounds like a potential DLL conflict.

The video card is working, the way Windows is talking to your video card may not be working correctly. Hopefully the bootlog will tell.