Help - I am at a loss

Last week I was trying to reinstall my printer and am not sure if that is what caused this problem, but here goes -

When starting my computer, just at start-up, when the first sound of start-up plays, my screen goes blank. The monitor loses the signal, but the PC sounds as if it is running (it does not shut off). I manually shut down my PC and it reboots into safe mode. I go into safe mode, disable my video driver and then reboots. Windows will start normally using the standard VGA driver.

So I did all sorts of things - Windows Restore, Scannow, ran diagnostics in safe mode, uninstalled video drivers, reinstalled... It did not fix it. So I think maybe it is my video card. I purchased a new XFX 8600 GT, installed it yesterday, installed drivers, restarted Windows and the exact same think happened! Disabling driver allows Windows Vista to run.

I have an HP m8120n Media Center PC with 4 GB ram, upgraded 500 watt power supply, Vista Home Premium and now a XFX Geforce 8600 GT video card.

Any ideas of what is going on?? :confused

Thank you so much -
Robin

 

To start with you say you installed a new graphics card but you say nothing about how you uninstalled the old, what if the old drivers were causing the problem? you should use a driver cleaner to remove all traces and then do a registry cleaning with ccleaner and then install the new drivers for the new card. You vc=can't trust windows uninstaller when it comes to Video Cards.

From your original description it doesn't sound like a video problem anyway since video works until the first sound goes off. Doesn't that seem like a sound problem to you?

Did you try unplugging and or uninstalling the printer?

If you use an overclocking application like rivatuner you should also uninstall that as well.

 

It is not a sound problem, after I lose the video, I still hear sound. And disabling the video driver does allow Windows to load, so I am sure it has nothing to do with the sound.

I did uninstall and unhook the printer and cleaned registry. As for a driver remover, I haven't tried that. I will keep working at it.

ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS??!! - this is so frustrating! There has never been a computer problem that I couldn't fix, but this one has me stumped!

 

Might be a long shot, but when you press F8 upon startup and get all those options like safe mode and such, try starting in VGA mode. Enable your video drivers first, and see if starting in VGA mode gives you a display.

 

They have 2 models which are similar in every way but price and performance. The PVT83JUDD3 XFX 8600GT has about 15% higher clock-speeds, and sells for a about 20$ dollars more than it's brother card, the PVT83JUDF3 XFX 8600GT. -- Which one do u have?

 

I just have to add here that disregarding the fact that everything works until the first sound goes off is a mistake. Just because the sound continues to play after the video goes out, doesn't mean its not a sound issue. If your sound card drivers were corrupted by the printer driver install, then it could be that the sound drivers are affecting the video since video and sound are interrelated with each other. Try reinstalling your sound card drivers over themselves and see what happens.