Difficulty Installing Windows 7 on a Dell XPS 720

BIOS version is A06 as stated earlier, as for the beep codes and diagnostic lights no issues there.

I have tried removing and reseating the video card earlier on before I tried doing the same to the TV tuner. I would try booting without the video card and use the onboard but it doesn't seem like this motherboard has one as the only place I can plug in my monitor is through the video card.

The Dell diagnostics partition I already removed a while ago but again it doesn't seem to be a hardware failure since I'm using the Vista partition right now to post this reply.

I'm gonna try the second monitor thing in a moment and will get back here to let you guys know what happened.

Okay I kind of want to cry...

I got it working, for some reason I don't know if it was Windows, NVIDIA or something else but Windows 7 didn't like my BenQ FP931 monitor... I got it working when I "borrowed" my brothers second monitor while he was out...

Anyway thanks for all the help, first time I've ever done anything else except scour the net for solutions so I really appreciate all those that have taken the time to help.

Quick side note... I really like my old 19' and don't really want to buy another monitor at the moment, would you guys know anyway to get Windows 7 to play nice with my monitor? I can't keep borrowing my brother's as it is his primary...

Windows 7 does extend the desktop onto the BenQ but it remains dark. Could it have something to do with the fact that it's a VGA monitor using a HDMI adapter to plug into my machine?

CoreFlood said:

Okay I kind of want to cry...

I got it working, for some reason I don't know if it was Windows, NVIDIA or something else but Windows 7 didn't like my BenQ FP931 monitor... I got it working when I "borrowed" my brothers second monitor while he was out...

Anyway thanks for all the help, first time I've ever done anything else except scour the net for solutions so I really appreciate all those that have taken the time to help.

Quick side note... I really like my old 19' and don't really want to buy another monitor at the moment, would you guys know anyway to get Windows 7 to play nice with my monitor? I can't keep borrowing my brother's as it is his primary...

Windows 7 does extend the desktop onto the BenQ but it remains dark. Could it have something to do with the fact that it's a VGA monitor using a HDMI adapter to plug into my machine?

Congratulations.
Yes, it's the connector.
You know, it's funny....when I made the suggestion of trying the other DVI plug on the video card, I even looked up your BenQ monitor to see what it had for inputs and what I found said "Dual D-sub/DVI inputs" so I assumed you were going DVI to DVI. If the monitor is supposed to have DVI inputs, do you mean you are going HDMI (from the video card) to DVI (on the monitor)?

*insert tears of joy here*

I got it working... I remembered that I still had the vista video driver that I downloaded from the dell support site and gave it a try when I saw that the video driver in use was the generic PnP driver... It lives T_T

Again I want to thank everyone for all the time and help they've offered in helping me find a solution. Now to test drive this baby out and start backing up my laptop so I can put it on there too!

Thank you!!!11!!one

Now... to return my brothers monitor to where it was so that he doesn't notice....

Edit: to answer zrtom's question yes that is the setup I have, I'm usually playing with two machines at a time so I have an older KVM switch in place.

Wally why do you think that driver isn't in the installer? Supposedly all Nvidia are.

gregrocker said:

Wally why do you think that driver isn't in the installer? Supposedly all Nvidia are.

That's what I thought too. And the nVidia drivers were there in every build from 6519 until RTM. Then it got funky. On some machines I've installed RTM on, the nVidia drivers were installed during installation. Oddly, on other machines, the nVidia drivers were not installed during installation and never showed up on Windows Update.

On one box here, Nvidia website is always behind Installer/Updates for WHQL drivers. Did some research and found that Windows Hardware Quality Labs are a partnership to develop drivers largely funded by MS, so that's prob the reason they get em out fastest.

Nvidia website is not that good with drivers, esp if you use the scan advisor.

Just to let you guys know, apparently when I tried updating to the most recent nvidia drivers in the past the monitor would die on me like it would before, my display only seemed to work when I used the driver provided by dell and that one apparently is EXTREMELY outdated...