Monitor and Display Adapter entries gone from Device Manager

[kayaksurfer]

My Monitor and Display Adapter entries are gone from Device Manager, and I mean the entire entry, not just the actual hardware beneath each of these headings.

When I look at my display properties I'm running the generic default monitor. When I try to install ATI catalyst drivers it aborts saying I should try installing some default windows VGA drivers first.

What I did to mess things up so badly?:
- needed to resolve an IRQ conflict, didn't want to try shuffling hardware cards.
- disabled ACPI by switching to Standard PC in Device Manager
- display driver then wouldn't load
- Did a repair reinstall of XP
- then had to reinstall SP1 and updates.
-reinstall sound drivers
-still couldn't reinstall display drivers or see display adapters or monitor in device manager.
- resolved the IRQ conflict by moving some PCI cards around.

Do I just reformat and start again, or is there a clever fix to this?

WinXP Home
ATI 9700 Pro
Sony 21"

 

[LiLithTecH]

Do yourself a favor, RE-INSTALL the OS.

Disabling ACPI the way you did was the FATAL blow.

 

[kayaksurfer]

Re-installed! Getting quicker every time...