My GeForce 7900GS will not work with Vista, Please help

[mikey1090]

Dwarf, I tried your method and got the same problem again - the dreaded black screen.

Ripbox, the only way I can start vista using the graphics card is in safe mode. When I do, I don't get an option like in your screenshot - it only shows 1 monitor.

Thanks for the help. Any more suggestions?

 

[Dwarf]

Hi Mike,

Try running your system with just the Vista drive installed. Does that make any difference? Also, run 'System Configuration' again. This time, select the 'Startup' tab and click 'Disable all' followed by 'OK' and then reboot your system. Note that I recommend that you disconnect from the Internet whilst you do this as one of the items disabled will be your anti-virus program. If your system reboots, go back into this utility on the same page and enable the topmost item that is currently disabled. Again, click 'OK' and reboot. Repeat until you have either got all entries re-enabled or the black screen returns. If the black screen returns, use SAFE mode to boot up and disable the last item you enabled. Check by rebooting, and then continue from where you left off, omitting the suspect item. Unfortunately, this will take quite some time and at the end of the day it might be easier to bite the bullet and perform a clean re-installation of Vista. Sometimes, for reasons that nobody can explain, this can solve seemingly inexplicable problems.
Dwarf

 

[mikey1090]

Hi Dwarf,

I am only using one hard drive - the one I am using right now with vista enabled.

I'll try what you said by disabling everything. No need to re-install vista as I only installed it last week and was hit with the problems right from the start - hence why I joined these forums to find help!

 

[mikey1090]

just tried it. Disabled everything and started up to be presented by a black screen again.

 

[Dwarf]

Hi Mike,

If you have a friend who is running Vista and who is willing to allow you to try your graphics card in their machine, then do it. If they then get a black screen when using your card but a normal one when using their own, this points to a possible hardware fault on your card. Confirm this by temporarily installing their card into your machine - you know that their card works correctly, so this should confirm this. Please note that you carry out the procedure in this post AT YOUR OWN RISK. Backups of important data should be carried out before hand.
Dwarf

 

[mikey1090]

My dad has a PC with XP running on it.

I was going to test out his ATI card on my PC and am confident it will work. Unless he agrees to swap is it likely i'll need to buy a new card?!

 

[Dwarf]

Hi Mike,

Yes, it is highly likely. I would stick with Nvidia rather than ATI though, as I personally feel that Nvidia driver support to AMD/ATI's, and I am not saying that just because I have an Nvidia 8800GT in my system (scores 5.9 in both graphics aspects of the WEI). It is possible that your graphics card is faulty - Vista puts far more stress on the graphics sub-system than previous versions of Windows, and this extra stress could be enough to cause failure of the card to display an image on screen, even though it has no problem in SAFE mode or earlier versions of Windows such as XP.
Dwarf

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

Is your power supply strong enough for your components? I have seen a weak 12V rail cause your issues. Do you have a multimeter? What does your 12V rail voltage read? You can measure it from the PCIe connection.