Windows 7: WEI fails to complete, fails the "video" portion...

On the gaming PC that I'm fixing for my son's friend, the WEI fails to complete, and fails the "video" portion... could the old 9800 GTX 512MB video card be failing? I've installed the newest nVidia drivers and all seems to running well, but I can't use WEI to get a baseline before I start tweaking the BIOS settings... Anyone recommend anything? Thanks!

I had that issue when I installed my new GPU. No fixes ever solved the issue until I performed a clean install and it got detected by WEI again.

But I wouldn't trust the WEI to guide performance. I mean, an old GT430 scores 7.9 randomly. Why.. because it's NVIDIA? =p

I'd be adjusting the bios settings first thing if this is a gaming rig. I doubt the card is failing.

Getting the memory set to manufacture specs would be first on my list but other settings can make a difference with board stability, north and south bridge voltages, CPU voltage, sometimes require attention, not to mention the memory speed and FSB needs to be in sync with CPU. Sometimes the auto settings work, other times they won't.

Thanks for the good advice, guys! I have the BIOS set for "fail safe" mode as it won't boot into windows when set to "optimized defaults" setting. I'm not familiar with AMD Phenom II's, so I'll be adjusting the BIOS very conservatively. I don't trust the WEI scores, I was just curious as to why the PC fails to complete the video portion and thus, stops... This PC was a mess, so I can't assume that anything was done correctly: video card was installed in the 4x slot instead of the 16x slot, cabling was a mess, drives were connected to the SATA II ports instead of the SATA II ports (no big deal there) and the thermal compound was applied like frosting on a cake and two of the four screws holding the waterblock to the CPU were loose, so the cooler was "hanging" off the CPU. The fans are completely gunked up and need to be replaced, etc... Lots of work left to be done tonight! Thanks again!

No overclock on the PC and I was running a baseline prior to any tuning. I replaced the RAM and all is fine, now! I just unlocked the additional 2 cores in the AMD Phenom II 960T, so the PC sees the 4 core CPU as a 6 core CPU and everything else is set to "optimized". I was seeing overall sluggish performance in Windows, so I thought it may be bad RAM. The heat spreaders on the RAM prevent me from seeing what it is and I was suspicious. So, the 2x4GB Crucial Ballistix Sport purchase ($43) really paid off!

I got the AMD cores unlocked, so it's a 4 core CPU that now has 6 cores and it's got a "mild" overclock on it. It's at 3.4Ghz versus the stock 3Ghz, without increasing the voltage and the temps are perfect (35 degrees Celcius). I'm running benchmark apps to test stability right now... So far, so good!