[starks3x]

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Hello. I am currently running Windows XP Pro with SP2 on a Dell with P4 3GHz.

Since my computer came with onboard graphics, I bought a vision tek ati radeon 9250 with a pci interface (no agp slots on my motherboard) to replace it. After a difficult driver installation a few months ago, my computer was running fine. I then began playing GTA Vice City a few days ago and thats when my computer started acting up. My screen would go blank at random times, so I decided to try system restore. After system restore however, my monitor only began working in safe mode (after booting up in normal mode, my screen would always go blank after the windows xp sign showed up). I found it odd that my video card only seemed to be working in safe mode.

So thinking my video card might have melted, I pulled it out of the pci slot and examined it...and found that it looked fine (no damage). So then I went into safe mode, uninstalled all ATI related drivers and software (while keeping my onboard graphics driver intact), restarted the computer and entered safe mode again, and tried to install the newest drivers from vision teks website. However, after extracting the driver...the auto intall program would initialize and then give me the following errors:

INF error, video driver not found

Setup was unable to complete the installation. Try to setup your display adapter with a standard VGA driver before running setup.

I tried installing the drivers from the CD that came with the video card and same problem. I then let Hardware Wizard install the drivers from the folder which had the newest ATI drivers and it installed them, but I still get no picture in normal mode (but I do get picture in safe mode still).

I went to event viewer and found some system errors. I don't know if they will help but here it is:

DCOM got error "This service cannot be started in Safe Mode " attempting to start the service EventSystem with arguments "" in order to run the server:
{1BE1F766-5536-11D1-B726-00C04FB926AF}

...which has an event id of 1005


The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
Fips
intelppm
SAVRTPEL
SPBBCDrv
SYMTDI

...which has an even id of 7026

I don't know if those errors are even relevant to my video problem, but I have many other ones similar to the above two.

ANY SUGGESTIONS would be greatly appreciated!!!! I really would like to get back using my radeon video card without any problems.

Final note, my monitor does work when I hook it up to the onboard graphics (safe mode and normal mode) and do any of you know if this is a software driver issue or a defective video card? (I thought it might not be a defective video card because it works in safe mode).

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Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. I suggest doing some clean up and starting over. First, make sure you have the current driver for your ATI video card available to install after clean up is done. Then go to http://www.drivercleaner.net/ and get Driver Cleaner (it is free). Then go to add/remove programs, and remove the ati video driver. Then boot into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner TWICE, each time deleting all that it finds. You will also need to go into the bios and make sure the on board video is disabled. Then re-boot, let windows detect your ATI PCI video card, and install the current video driver.

[austin_o]

Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. I suggest doing some clean up and starting over. First, make sure you have the current driver for your ATI video card available to install after clean up is done. Then go to http://www.drivercleaner.net/ and get Driver Cleaner (it is free). Then go to add/remove programs, and remove the ati video driver. Then boot into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner TWICE, each time deleting all that it finds. You will also need to go into the bios and make sure the on board video is disabled. Then re-boot, let windows detect your ATI PCI video card, and install the current video driver.

[comanighttrain]

get a new graphics card. I had a 9250, same problem, it cant be fixed, i went to ATI and everything. No luck.

[starks3x]

PROBLEM FIXED!!!!! Thanks for the responses guys, I actually used Driver cleaner and the driver still wasn't installing. So I called Vision Tek again for help (like the fifth time this week) and I finally got a technician who knew what the error message meant. The solution was pretty simple: disable the onboard graphics driver, eventhough Dell told me that setting the graphics option to "auto" in bios would be enough and I should not disable the onboard graphics driver. When I told the vision tek technician that Dell told me that I didn't have to do that and that the motherboard should recognize the new video card in my pci slot and automatically disable the onboard graphics, the technician laughed and said Dell technicians were idiots. So I tried his advice (uninstalled all old ATI drivers and then disabled the onboard driver through device manager) then restarted the computer and just like that I got picture in normal mode, and I was able to install the new ati drivers without the error message.


What a relieff!!!

If anyone else is getting "INF error, video driver not found" I guess the best thing to do is to disable the onboard graphics driver through device manager (and of course set it off or to auto in bios), EVEN IF DELL TECHNICIANS SAY YOU DONT HAVE TO...they obviously don't know what they're talking about.

Thanks again everyone!