I have a Dell Dimension 8400. I recently replaced the standard ATI Radeon 300SE video card with the NVIDIA 6800 GT (both PCI-E cards). At first boot, all was working well. However, I have problems when rebooting after shutting down. The screen shows some garbled words at boot, and occasionally some small rectangular colored spots on the screen. When it’s showing the Windows logo during reboot, the screen and system freeze. If I reboot in safe mode, the machine will boot, but the video is extremely rough, with an omnipresent greenish checkered pattern. However, in safe mode, by minimizing and maximizing almost any window after it completely boots up, the green pattern goes away, and screen looks great. When I reboot from safe mode after this, all works perfectly! If I reboot again and again, all is well, however, if I let the machine sit for 1/2 hour or more after shutting down and try to reboot, the original problem returns.
I’ve done everything I know, including verifying the card is seated well, checking power connections to the card, updating to the latest video drivers, updating the BIOS to the latest and greatest, reinstalling card drivers and starting from scratch. There is no onboard graphics to disable in the BIOS. Nothing works. The old card works well. I then tried putting in an ATI Radeon X800 Pro, and the machine wouldn’t even boot.
Any thoughts? I do not want to have to use the original card.
