Installed a vid card driver, created a mess

Why is everyone saying to uninstall the driver then install a new one? Isn't that how he got in trouble in the first place?

Drivers should be updated, never uninstalled when it's for a critical component.

Would you uninstall your mouse and keyboard drivers at the same time, then expect to be able to install new mouse & keyboard drivers? It can't be done.

Is there an extra slot for another video card? If you have a card that works in that machine (even if only on xp default drivers) that could be used to get the system up and running so you can install the driver for the card you want to use.

 

What you are saying is not correct. Even if you uninstall the video driver the windows standard video driver (vga.sys) will always be available (cannot be removed) and should work with any video card, albeit only providing bare-bones vga capabilities, good enough to allow you to install the right driver.

Telling him to install another video card is bad advice and completely unnecessary.

 

What happens to that vga.sys driver when you install a card and it's driver?

 

Nothing happens to it - it sits on the hard drive and does nothing (not loaded). Its part of the OS, its always there as a fallback.

 

Ah ha. Thank you very much for the education.

 

Plug another working graphic card in the slot then go to Device Manager and uninstall all Display Drivers. Turn off the computer.

Plug in the old card and allow windows to do a new hardware installation using windows driver or find another old driver using searches.

If that doesn't work you might want to update the mother board driver.

sg20

 

Wow, no disrespect intended but this is why people shouldn't come to ET for PC advice.

 

FIXED.. ..

Thks for the help, some helpful tips in your posts. here is what i did, not saying this was the cause or even the fix but SOMETHING worked. (like trading, i learned how to use a pc from trial and error)

I googled last night what to do if cmos is suspected as corrupt. i guessed that because i switched the pins without taking the juice off first. Someone said they did that once and was lost like i was. He said to disconnect the power overnight and try it again. I did that overnight and was on another puter when i posted the problem during trading hours on another machine. After mkt closed i tried it again..................BOOM it went into bios so i had a screen. Put in the xp disk and did a reformatt to wipe the hard drive.............went through it all slicker than ownshit through a tin horn. The vid card cleared up also, no more green background etc.

Again, thks for the help.