MichaelH

Thanks for the input. I've been getting to the OS by reinstalling the old (barely functioning) video card. I then remove the nVidia drivers and proceed to try again, only with a different version of the drivers. So far, I've been unsuccessful in getting the new card to work with any nVidia drivers. The card packaging indicates it is "NT compatible", and includes NT drivers. Could this possibly be an I/O resource issue? (this 64MB card is replacing an 8MB card on a system that has a lot of PCI cards in it. I still suspect that the card itself is okay. I'm able to get to the desktop using default NT VGA drivers with the new card (16 colors at 640x480 - argh!). If I am unable to get this working soon, I'll start searching for a surplus parts store and hope they have older cards I can try.

I am replacing a failing 8MB PCI video card on an old NT system. So in a nutshell, I was looking for a very low-end PCI card that is NT compatible. The MX4000 64MB is the closest match I could find locally. When I initially swapped the cards, NT used the default VGA drivers (as expected). I then installed the driver that came with the card, and restarted the system. NT startup gets to the "build" screen (showing # of CPUs & memory, and with the 4 dots ....), but it hangs there. I get a funny little ASCI "smiley face" up in the top left corner, covering the first letter of the "build" message. There's no system activity at that point (with that card & drivers). I called the MFG support - no help... I have tried a couple of other driver versions - no luck... I have verified no on-board video... I have completely uninstalled the drivers between tries... I'm guessing the card is okay, and that it's an issue with either the drivers or my PCs available resources. Any suggestions for a fix on this would be greatly appreciated. [Edited by michaelh on 2005-12-21 01:25:49]