New
#1
BSOD on install/possible graphics driver issues?
I'll try to be as concise as possible.
I bought a used machine recently through craigslist.
Specs:
Acer M5100
AMD Dual Core BE-2300 @ 1.9ghz
4gb DDR2 RAM
250GB Hitachi HDD
and I've been switching out an ATI Radeon X700 and a GeForce 7950GT for graphics.
Both the graphics cards are good as I have subsequently used them successfully in my other desktop.
The problem starts after install from either of the two Win7 Home Premium trial discs I've made. If I have the GeForce card connected I will get BSOD almost immediately after the 'windows' loading screen. If I have the ATI card in the monitor will shut off and display "no signal" after the windows loading screen. If I try using the onboard graphics it will display a white screen with a low resolution mouse cursor after the windows loading screen.
Everything performs "fine" in safe mode. If I uninstall whatever graphics driver I have loaded (either manually from Nvidia, AMD, or by Windows default) then it can "start normally" but only in default resolution and it will immediately install Windows preferred driver and prompt for a restart which inevitably results in one of the above issues.
I have booted successfully with zero issues in an x86 version of Win7 but as I have plans on upgrading much of the hardware I really need to get a 64bit OS working. I don't have any ideas on what could be the issue here. It seems like a graphics driver problem but I really don't know what steps I can take to fix it.
There are also a few potentially relevant issues that have come up over the course of the day. For example, I used a Gparted Live CD to partition the HDD before my first attempt at installing. I have since wiped out all those partitions after trying several reinstall and reformats, but it still happened.
I've found that the SATA cable in either my HDD or CDRW needs to be "re-sat" quite often with all the switching of gfx cards and such. It would cause the BIOS to load incredibly slow as well as any other preboot processes.
Please help, I am pretty quick to the uptake. We can solve this!