Windows 7: Replacing faulty grfx card with same model freezes/locks up machine

Hi,

My Dell Vostro 430 (Windows 7 x64) has an nVidia G310 card but the fan is faulty (very noisy - sounds like a small chainsaw). I had a replacement part (same nVidia G310) sent to me by Dell.

However, when I install the new the grfx card into the machine, Win 7 starts to boot, gets to the splash screen (just before you can select the user) and then locks up/freezes.

Reinstalling the old card back in the machine, Win 7 will boot successfully.


Dell tell me that the card they sent me is the same model as the one in my machine. Does anyone know what could be the cause of this freeze/crash/lock up?


If they cards are exactly the same, then the same device drivers would you expect this problem with the card?



Any suggestions on how to diagnose?

I know the replacement card works (kinda) as I can boot the self installed Linux system on this Dell computer and graphics display is fine - machine just locks up when booting Win 7 so I suspect drivers or something similar.

Any help appreciated.
thanks

Did you try the safe mode? It doesn't load the Nvidia drivers, just the generic ones. Else, try a startup repair.

Not yet.

However, having a look through my Linux system logs, the original (faulty fan) card shows up:

[drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Detected an NV50 generation card (0x0a8300b1)

whereas the replacement card shows up as

[drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Detected an NV50 generation card (0x0a8300a2)

These are the syslog entries from the different boot of the linux box. Looks like the card they gave me is a slight difference in the architecture.

Not an expert in Windows, I assume there is only G310 display driver and it should initialise the card correctly or is there something dependant in regedit?

There really isn't any important difference between the two cards, one should act just the same as another. As long as it goes in the PCI slot you should be able to boot with at least the generic drivers. Another possibility may be a corrupted GPU BIOS, but that's tricky to reflash.

I didn't get a chance to try safe mode to boot as the courier wad chasing me to give him one card to return to base

dell sent me another card and this time, switching it out worked fine. Booting Linux the logs confirm that the new replacement card has the same 0xa8300b1 identifier as the original

it would suggest Windows 7 cares about the exact card configuration

Meh, it shouldn't. I put new graphic cards in my machine all the time.