Vista - Vista 32 bit video problems

OK Im new here so go easy on me. Im also by no means an expert, so again go easy. My daughter bought a computer several years ago made by HP that runs Vista Home edition 32 bit we upgraded the video card and power supply when she bought it. Went with NVidia GeForce 3500 at the time pretty decent card we thought. Well now shes had some issues that forced her to restore the system and we couldnt find the install info for the card. Went to NVidia's website and downloaded drivers now the computer wont boot up. We keep getting a blue screen that says windows encountered a problem. I cant remember if the system came with a card that wasnt cutting it or if there was integrated graphics on the motherboard. So when we experienced the problem booting after installing drivers for the card I went into setup and changed the video to onboard graphics now we get nothing at bootup and monitor keeps going to sleep, cant see anything to try and fix.

as you said, i should take it into account that you are new at this stuff and will respect that. when you said a geforce "3500" do you mean a QUADRO 3500 FX from Nvidia (workstation/professional graphics card)? or a Geforce 3 Ti-500 if you could find out? because first. you dont install geforce drivers for a quadro card (assuming im just plain stupid for asking that question) and you technically (that i know of) cannot run a Geforce 3 Series card with Vista, due to the fact that a Geforce 3 is limited up to DirectX 8.0 Standards in which Vista requires a 100% fully compatible SM 3.0 (Shader model, and ive seen it done with Shader model 2.0) DirectX 9.0c Graphics card. Look at the label on the graphics card (if still applied) and see if you can find a model or brand of the card.

Im sorry its a 8500 GT and it has worked fine for several years as I said earlier we upgraded right after she bought it and now several years later it started acting up causing her to reformat. After the reformat it worked fine but apparently it wasnt running the new card, graphics werent want she was used to. Cant give much more specifics cause it isnt running at all now.

Of course.

What you could do is go into the PC itself and reset the CMOS (the system's main config for the BIOS NOT VISTA ITSELF. totally safe) by taking the Coin looking battery out, pressing the power button while the pc is unplugged, putting the battery back in, and see if it boots using the card.

Specifically though, which drivers do you remember installing from the Nvidia site? because the "corrupting" video drivers do not activate until vista loads up. so if you see nothing before it loads up, then that's something wrong with the BIOS settings.

When she told me she was having problems with video quality I went to the Nvidia website and downloaded the correct drivers. After installing the system wouldnt boot up it would get to a blue screen saying Windows had encountered a problem and would shut down thats when I tried to go into setup and change the bios to onboard video. Now we get nothing monitor keeps going to sleep at bootup.

lol. ok did you switch your vga cable to the integrated video instead of the card? the reason your not able to see an image is because you still may be plugged into the video card. just switch it to the motherboard's video and you should get an image.

The back of her case should look something like this with the VGA port being the onboard that the bios was refering too. some motherboards detect a video card and automatically switch to it from the onboard video.