Black screen after video card driver installation. ASUS AH3450

Trying to upgrade the video card in my wife's computer. Specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 2.00Ghz
768MB RAM
Motherboard: MSI KM4M
Old video card: Nvidia Geforce4 MX440-8X 64MB
OS: Windows XP Home SP3


Opted for the ASUS AH3450 256MB AGP8X. Windows loaded after physically installing card, in super low resolution, but after installing the drivers from the CD I am getting black screen on startup. I went into safe mode and removed the previous Nvidia drivers from Add/Remove programs but to no avail. I can't find anything in the specs of the motherboard and video card that would point to incompatibility, although please correct me if I am missing something glaringly obvious. I am wondering what is the next logical step to try, to get this thing working?

Thanks for your time.

Cheers,Paul

 

You have a conflict!! Your old card was a nVidia and your new card is an ATI Radeon. ATI and nVidia drivers do not play well together!! You needed to uninstall the nVidia drivers before attempting to install the ATI drivers. Oh well, let's try this; uninstall ALL your vid drivers and re-boot. Now try and install the ATI drivers. Just make sure there is NO trace of the nVidia drivers left. Let me know how you fair!

 

Where's my manners:-o Welcome to MGs Paul...hope you enjoy your stay!!!

 

Thanks for the welcome

Other than in Add/remove programs and in device manager under display adapters, is there anywhere else that I should look for traces of drivers? I'll have a good cleanup and try again from scratch.

Cheers,
Paul

 

That should take care of it. There are programs written especially to remove nVidia drivers completely, but XP is pretty good on removing the 'bits and pieces' so you shouldn't have any problems. Let me know how it goes!

 

Still no joy. I have also tried downloading the latest drivers from ASUS and direct from ATI (installed after removing older drivers) and still getting the same black screen after reboot. Could the card be incompatible with the system?

 

Just for S & Gs, try going through the Device Manager, and uninstall the Display Adapter AND the driver for the monitor if it is model specific, not just Plug n Play. Then restart with the new card installed.

Just remember all the prerequisites, discharge your static, and unplug the PC when removing the cover to work on it.

 

I tried uninstalling the monitor drivers as suggested but still got the same issue. I ended up calling the retailer who told me that there are known issues with the chipset of the mother board, an MSI KM4M (not sure what the actual chipset of the board is though) and all ATI video drivers. So they exchanged it for an equivalent Nvidia card. Which installed smoothly at the first attempt. And the wife's Cintiq is now up and running (which was the whole point of upgrading the card).

Thanks for the help though guys, I appreciate your time.

Paul

 

Maybe you can try a third-party driver like the Omega Drivers. On my old computer, the video card drivers were so unstable I used them.

 

Thanks for the info,Paul. I didn't realize there was a problem with ATI drivers and the chipset of you board. I'm just glad you finally got your wife's machine up and running again. Just sorry we couldn't have been of more help. BTW, here's the specs for your board, in case you're curious http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=KM4M-V

 

Thanks for that link, I looked for that info on the motherboard one time before but never managed to find it. Although I think this is the last upgrade that I will squeeze out of this old system, so hopefully I won't need to worry about the specs again.