Vista - Black screen at startup with NVIDIA driver

Everytime i try and load up Vista i get a black screen. So i reboot in safe mode, uninstall driver and it loads up fine. Windows installs the driver and restart, only to be back at square 1

Have you tried downloading the driver from the Nvidia site rather than allowing Windows Update to do it? This should sort the problem.

UKMedia

Yep, tried that Getting really frustrating. As soon as i uninstall the driver in safe mode and reboot it's fine. But says i need to update the driver, cause it's just using the windows driver. So do that and blamo, black screen.

I don't know what video card your running, I have a 7950GX2 there is a known issue with the newer drivers working with older cards. They don't play well with Vista Aero and the older cards. The result is when booting up all you get is a black screen with a curser as windows loads. There are one of two work arounds for this til Nvidia gets thier act together.

1. Start up with the default windows drivers, once windows is loaded turn off Aero and use the default XP desktop. Then upgrade your drivers to the newest Nvidia driver. With this method you loose some of the bling and functionality that Aero gives you.

2. (recommended) Install the 178.13 drivers. These are the last known good drivers that Nvidia put out that works with older cards and vista with full funtionality. You can find the drivers at the link I'll post below. There really is no need to upgrade the drivers from this version but you can check with nvidia periodicly to see if the issue gets resolved, but keep a copy of these around in case they don't.

64bit Vista
GeForce Release 178

32bit Vista
GeForce Release 178

is this a new thing? have you just built your rig? are you uninstalling the previous drivers properly first , using a driver cleaner in safemode to properly uninstall? such as driver cleaner or driver sweeper?

Guru3D - Driver Sweeper

Hi, yeah i have a 8800 Ultra. I'll try the older drivers and the Aero off. And see if that works

Nah my rig is a good 12months old. I'll also try uninstalling using a driver cleaner and see if that works. Thanks for the advice guys. I'll keep you posted

When you go to Device Manager, what do you see under Monitors? is your Monitor Name & Model listed or just "Generic PnP Monitor"? if the latter... therein lies your problem.

I was having the same issue and not until I change the monitors driver was that the problem went away.

Also, if you are not installing the GPU driver with "Run as an Administrator", you may get this problem as well.

Does it even show your desktop for a split second before it goes black? I had an issue where because of a malfunctioning full screen game, it changed the order of my monitors (I have 2) and it defaulted to my second display which I nearly always have off unless I watch a movie. So when I would boot up, it showed my desktop for a couple seconds and the signal would go away and my monitor would go into sleep mode. I found out and changed it back using VNC.

Mine says Generic Non-PnP Monitor. And yes i am installing it as "Run as an Administrator" Tried looking for updated drivers for my monitor and it says it has the best available. Still having no luck even with going to the old drivers GeForce Release 178. I'll check all the cables, but i don't think this will help seeing as it works fine in safe mode and when i uninstall the drivers it boots up fine. I'll keep trying stuff. Thanks for the imput guys