Windows 7 - Windows 7 Installed 8800 drivers for my 9800GX2 card

It happened. It came, it saw, it conquered. Now because of that I cannot start up my PC without resorting to cutting the power from my video card. When I started up my PC one day, it said your 8800 video card drivers has been installed! All without my consent, of course. How could Windows 7 misread my video card and install the one that would prevent my PC from starting up?! Well, how am I going to get this problem fixed considering how I can't install the proper driver for my video card if it's not plugged in...

well you could download and save the correct driver, uninstall the wrong one, plug the card in, tell windows where to search for the driver when it recognizes the "new" hardware and put it on that way

Here's the thing, if I have my video card plugged in, the computer won't even turn on properly at all. Sure, the power may come on but the monitor won't turn on.

I thought all drivers from nvidia were as one ie 8800 drivers same as gtx 295 same as 6200? Only difference I thought was 64 - 86.

Have you tried system restore?

i thought so too, but someone else was complaining about a similar issue, i've had none out of my cards though and they are nvidia as well.

Boot to Safe mode, open Device Manager and rollback the video driver. Then download the driver from Nvidia and install it.

Once that is done set Windows Update to "notify but not install", that way it can't install a driver without you knowing about it. And if a driver does show up there, don't install it.

They are but who knows what can come through Windows Update, and that is the only way to get a video driver to update on its own.

That's precisely the issue here, if I try to turn on my computer with the video card plugged in -- the monitor won't turn on. Thus I cannot do anything with my PC unless I have the cables from my power supply that goes to my video card unplugged.

Are you seeing the bios boot screen and then nothing, or nothing at all once the power button is pushed?

If it is nothing at all then it is a hardware error, and yes drivers have been known to cause hardware failures; rare but it does happen.

If you can at least see the bios screen with the power to the card disconnected, you could also try doing a System Restore (assuming you haven't disabled it) by booting from your Windows 7 disk and following method 2 here,

System Restore

If I have power to the video card connected, the monitor will not turn on but if I have it disconnected - it will turn on.

I did a system restore by 4 days back but it didn't really do anything. I am just going to back up my files on an external hard drive then format the internal hard drive and everything should be fine from there.

bump