new graphics card nvidia driver fail W7 boot

Ok. So I just got a new nvidia 9600 gt graphics card. Uninstalled onboard graphics and installed the card. plugged my monitor into card. Seemed to work fine, windows loaded installed the driver and told me to restart. As it loaded up until the windows 7, right before logon screen I hear the graphics card's fan slow down to a whisper (its pretty loud). Windows hangs at the load screen for 15minutes before I absolutely know something wrong. I restart, same thing. I system restore to get back into windows; download a new driver from nvidia.com, update the driver, and I'm still getting this issue.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I also have a geforce gtx 260, but when trying that one windows fails to even recognize it.

Asus M3A78-T
AMD Phenom IIx4
4gb moshin ram
corsair 650w
2TB hitachi HDD

EDIT: forgot to add, updated bios, enabled PCI-E as primary and disabled onboard video.

SOLVED. Imagine getting not one, but TWO DOA graphics cards. Very weird. I returned the gtx 260 for a ATI radeon HD 5770. Popped her in and she is working beautifully. Honestly with two DOA graphics cards I was really pushing towards something else being messed up with my rig, i was positive it wasn't the graphics cards...not both. The RNG strikes again!