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Help!!! Hung in XP Pro installation

M

marcplante

Senior member
Hardware should be in my SIG

After some deliberation, I finally upgraded to SP3 yesterday. Maybe bad coincidence, but I lost network connectivity. Tried upgrading the Network adapter (NVidia Network adapter driver), and it wouldn't take, so I pulled out my XP disk to do an upgrade install to revert to working drivers.

Windows Setup tripped over my 8800GT video card commenting that the drivers were not windows certified. Thus hung installation. Microsoft's solution was to run seetup with the video card removed from the system (no, I don't have a basic Mobo video port). The hope was that setup would simply install a default video driver.

Ran setup blind through what seemed to be the driver install and waited. When the system seemed to stop, powered down and reinstalled the card. On startup, the computer resumes setup, then goes to a screen which is totally black, though I can see the cursor....no other response.

I have tried VGA and safe mode and get the same results. I also booted from the CD and tried to exit setup, but I can't get setup to stop resuming, and taking me back to the same black screen.

I can pull this drive and access it from another computer using a USB drive enclosure. I also have a second partition on this drive that can hold a parallel install. Unfortunately, b/c of NTFS, I dont appear to be able to access my own working files. from an outside computer.

Questions:

1) Is there any way to access my drive and delete the setup flag to break the setup loop I am in? Is there another way to do this?

If I plug this drive into another computer with basic onboard graphics, might that break the cycle and get my install running again?

2) If I start over with a clean install of XP, how to I deal with the new video card's compatibility issue?

Use another computer to do the install then mover it back to rediscover my peripherals?

Thanks
 
Where does the blank screen come up? Is it immidiate? Like Right when you boot windows? POST screen -> black screen with flashing cursor? Or does it still do the setup portion before hanging to the blank screen with the flashing cursor? In either case I was thinking possibly trying the recovery console and fixing the MBR might help. Its what I ususally do to machines that are hanging on the black screen with the blinking cursor.
 
Not blank screen with a blinking cursor, an active screen with a moving, mouse cursor with a black background. When I start in safe mode, I get splash screen then I see the safe mode designations in all four corners, and the OS build version across the top, and a black screen with living mouse cursor. so I'm getting display, but nothing beyond that.

When the MS tech told me to run w/o the video card in, I suspect that the driver doesn't know how to drive the 8800GT very well.

I'm mining the drive right now from my wife's notebook, and going to give up and wipe and reinstall the entire OS, but I don't know how to get around the uncertified drivers for the 8800GT.

My thought is to plug the HD into my father inlaws box which has basic onboard graphics, then manually update the drivers for the 8800GT, then move the drive BACK into my box and watch the fireworks of hardware rediscovery. Not much else going on. Hard wired keyboard and LCD display.

Sound like a reasonable plan. I'l love to rebuild in my box and save the drive, but I don't know how to get around the video driver issue.

Thx for your insights
 
Oh ok, I understand better now, Yeah that seems like the best course of action to me and probably the same thing I would to in this scenario, unless someone else has a better idea
 
hmmm...backed up my machine (of course I overlooked the PST file, but got a lot back from my blackberry). When I did the full install, Windows didn't care about the video card. I guess it just tripped over the existing software when trying to upgrade what was there.

BTW, note on Gaining administrative control of NTFS files when trying to mine your old hard drive. When you first try, NTFS security keeps you from accessing your old Mydocs folder.

Turn off simple file sharing, then right click on folders you are having problems accessing and right click, then select security tabs and it allows you to reassign ownership of the folders to the user of the machine you are mining from. At that point you can copy them and recover them


Marc
 
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