Blank screen after installing new graphics card

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troubled

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hi
I recently installed a new geforce 5200 xfx 256mb pci card on my Dell dimension 1100 (only supports pci). I disabled the onboard graphics and installed the drivers. First of all when windows booted up everything was in really bad resolution, I tried installing the drivers again and now I get a blank screen after xp has loaded, though I can hear the login noise. I've tried with and without the card, i've switched between "onboard" and "auto" in the system setup, i've tried switching the monitor between the card and the onboard but nothing works. It seems to be a fairly common problem but in all the examples i've read elsewhere on the net the problem could be fixed by using safe mode. But when I try safe mode I just get a screen full of text and nothing happens. An example of the text is "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS\System 32\Drivers\pci.sys" and a list of other files in the same location.

Any idea what the problem could be? I'm not too bothered about getting the card working anymore, I just want to see my desktop again:(

any help would be apreciated.
 
i'm pretty sure its seated ok. I pushed it right in as far as it will go and still no luck.
 
You could try a different PCI slot but fisrt what drivers are you installing are they direct from Nvidia or did they come with the card?

do you have windows installed on a partition/drive other than C: btw?
 
i've tried all 3 pci slots and there seems to be no difference which one I use.
The drivers are on a cd that came with the card.
And no I don't have windows installed anywhere other than the C drive. The computer came with xp already installed so I don't have a cd or anything.
 
thats interesting.

I suggest you only use nvidia drivers from nvidia's website.

Do you use window XP? I expect this is yes, can you get to a command prompt and tell me the content of your boot.ini file?
you can load the recovery console from the windows XP CD and this is a DOS like command prompt

Edit: sorry you did say you use XP up there. I find it very odd that you cant boot windows because of a graphics card problem.
anyway from the recovery console you could try the Fixboot command
 
ah I see... the command i was thinking of was bootcfg anyway :)

its just the ARC path there seems to suggest your OS is installed on your second partition. A little odd if you only have one partition and that might be why its not loading.

you can get to the boot menu I take it? as you've tried safe mode?
I dont suppose there's any sort of command prompt or recovery option?
 
i've pretty much tried every option in the boot menu with no success. it seems my hands are tied as there's only so much I can do without being able access windows.
Is it possible to somehow boot from a usb device? I think i've seen an option to do so. I think booting from an external source is my only hope now.
 
oh dear.

Do you know if your filesystem was FAT32 or NTFS. XP normally uses NTFS but if by luck its FAT32 then all you need is a WIN98 boot disk to get at your boot files.

If it is NTFS, and I expect it is, thats a problem. there are thirdparty bootable CDs of which you can download and burn to a CD, however this whould not be easy! these bootable CDs usually require some sort of slipstream from your XP CD.. which you dont have :/
without an XP CD your a bit stuck, can you borrow one from someone?
 
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