strange black screen problem

[flashychap]

Ok so here is the story, ive got a Maxdata Amd athlon64 3500+ with 1gb ram. The pc came with a pants geforce 4000mx 64meg graphics card that i tried to play my only 2 games on - quake 4 and warhammer40000 dawn of war (dow). Dow would play but a bit choppy but quake 4 just couldn't cope and it would just stall on the menu screen. strange thing was that if i updated the graphics card driver then quake 4 would run albeit very very choppy but then Dow wouldn't run i would just get a black screen with sound, no intro video, no menu, nothing.
So i updated my graphics card to a Palit Geforce 7600gs AGP (no PCIE slot) but basically got the same problem of the black screen on dow. I has since bought 2 more games - Warhammer mark of chaos and a basic game for my son called design your own model railway. But both of these games just have a black screen with sound. I have tried re-installing the games, updating them, installing the latest video drivers and have even re-installed windows but to no avail. I also installed a new 500w power supply at the same time as my graphics card (well e few weeks after) just wondered if anything could have happened there.
so thats everything, just hoping someone could shed some light on it!
thanks

 

[TheDancingFetus]

Are you using an older Monitor? I don't know if this is the problem or not, but maybe the games are trying to run in a higher resolution or refresh rate than your monitor supports.

 

[Apokalipse]

Are you using an older Monitor? I don't know if this is the problem or not, but maybe the games are trying to run in a higher resolution or refresh rate than your monitor supports.

Yeah, I think so too. You can force it to use a certain refresh rate in the Nvidia control panel.

 

[networkgeek]

use driver cleaner to clean out the old driver in safe mode after uninstalling then install the latest driver from nvidia

 

[flashychap]

no i have tried that, checked my monitors usable refresh rates in control panel, changed it on the nvidia control panel and even tried overiding it to 50hz on the direct x panel and no joy.
the monitor is only a crt but not more than 3 years old cos it was my friends ld one he lelt me cos i fried my lcd monitor by having it in the conservatory

 

[flashychap]

What is a good driver cleaner to use?



Did i mention though that the weird thing is that quake 4 runs like a dream and it is only the other games that i get a black screen on.

 

[flashychap]

downloaded driver cleaner pro 5.1 and cleaned all the nvidia sections then instead of installing the drivers from mycard cd i used a driver off a recent games magazine.
Still no joy
just cant see why quake4 works but nothing else does, what does it do different?