Win 7 won't load after installing GPU

Hello,

I'm having trouble installing my graphics card (ATI Radeon Sapphire HD 5670) on a fresh Windows 7 system. I recently had to reformat and start over with this system twice because of virus and HDD issues. On the first reformat, the graphics card and Windows installed perfectly and worked fine for months.

**Symptoms**
However, this time when I try to boot the system with the card physically installed, the system halts at the "Starting Windows" screen. Sometimes it gives a BSOD, sometimes it will hang indefinitely at a black screen. Other times it hangs before the Starting Windows screen. It is a little random, honestly.

The BSOD most recently gave me this error code: STOP: 0x000000A5 (Parameter1, Parameter2, Parameter3, Parameter4). KnowledgeBase says this is a problem with ACPI compliance of the BIOS. What is strange is that I already flashed the BIOS when I installed Win7, and have never had any problems with it. When I just now looked at the BIOS properties, it lists the most current version R01-C0, but the date is from 2007, not 2008 which is listed on the Acer support site. ACPI is enabled and the suspend type is set to S3(STR). (I have no idea if that's what it's supposed to be) When I just tried to re-flash the BIOS, the program says that this is NOT an Award BIOS! I also noticed that after these BSODs the card is very hot when I remove it.

My installation process: uninstall onboard video adapter, shut down, physically install card, make sure video boot is set to PCIex, turn on power. I've also tried installing the latest version of ATI Catalyst after uninstalling onboard adapter. I've gone through this process many times at this point and nothing is changing.

Otherwise, my system works perfectly with the onboard video. All of the Windows Updates are already applied, though I forgot to do this after trying to install the card for the first time--if that screwed everything up or not.

This seems to either be an issue with Windows drivers or a bad BIOS flash. The card appears to work fine since I can view the BIOS, the Windows loading screen, and the BSOD. But as soon as Windows loads, either normal or Safe Mode, it crashes. The power supply is 500W and I never had a problem with it before so that isn't the issue.

Appreciate any help! Thanks!

Can you boot into Windows in safe mode (F8)?

If so, that suggests a driver problem.

No, it stops loading in safe mode, too.

sphenoid12 said:

No, it stops loading in safe mode, too.

That's too bad. That suggests a hardware problem.

Do you have an alternate graphics card that you can try?

Unfortunately, no.

Archer: see my first post about onboard graphics

I fixed it!

1) Windows Update kept installing over DAYS. I thought I had Service Pack 1 but it didn't come until much later.

2) One of my memory cards was not seated properly.

After both of these things, I put my graphics card back in and the system booted perfectly. I suspect the big issue was not having Service Pack 1, since the card should be PnP compatible according to Microsoft site.

For someone in a similar situation with a fresh install of Win7, make sure it completely updates over several days before trying to install the card.