PC freezes during boot after "upgrade"

[Tripredacus]

I put "upgrade" in quotes because you could say I did a side-step or downgrade. I wanted to upgrade my video card to be able to use three monitors. The card I have now is an ATI FireMV. It was not compatible with my motherboard, Intel DB43LD. It would just reboot during post. I called Intel support and they said this was because the board did not detect a GPU. Or more specifically, since IGD disables the integrated graphics if there is any card in the PCI-E x16 slot, the ATI card had not responded fast enough during POST and the system would reset. I had updated the BIOS, but the BIOS ended up getting corrupted! I backed that down and no change. I tried another DB43LD that had the BIOS upgrade but no luck. I tried a DQ45CB and the card worked but NOT after updating the BIOS. I found 1 board that did work, a DG45FC.

We'll forget about the fact that I now have a Mini-ITX board in a 7 bay/full ATX case.... and that I like to tell long stories about things...

After confirming the board actually would POST after the BIOS update and the card, I put it into my case and hooked everything back up. One other change, I upgrade the PSU to a 500W. My first boot (HEY the OS is 7PRO32) went fine. It booted up, I logged in and it detected all my new stuff and then installed the drivers. It prompted for a reboot and I did. Then it would get to the Starting Windows screen, work for a bit and then just sit there. The animation would stop and the CAPS LOCK key did not work, thus PC is locked up. I reset and tried to run Startup Repair but this didn't work either.

However, I am able to boot into Safe Mode, but as usually, I can't install or uninstall anything. There is no left-over devices in Device Manager and nothing (non network related) is logged in Event Viewer.

I need to know what options I have for getting it to boot into Normal Mode again. Here is a summary of what I had done:

1. Changed from Intel DB43LD to Intel DG45FC motherboard

2. Changed from ATI X1800 Radeon PCIE to ATI FireMV PCIE

3. Changed from 350W PSU to 500W PSU

4. Disabled CCC with MSCONFIG in Safe Mode

CCC was complaining that there was no ATI card installed because only the WDM drivers were installed.

Hmm I have an idea just now. I have previously used this board with XP and a Matrox Parphellia, and just like this current system, IGD does NOT disable the onboard video like it is supposed to. What ends up happening is that it still gets detected, and on the XP I had to disable the onboard in Device Manager. I guess I will try that out, but if you have any other ideas, let me know.

[cluberti]

I have an idea - get me a dump of the system via the keyboard the next time it's hung (add the values necessary in safe mode) .

[johnhc]

Tripredacus, you may well be on to something. If so, please let us know. Perhaps you have an ATI driver problem. I would suggest you remove the ATI driver, if you can (you said you could not uninstall). If you can boot, don't let the video driver install and go to the AMD site and get the latest ATI driver/CCC for your card. If your onboard GPU really works, use the BIOS to disable the ATI card (PCIE slot) and see if you can run. Use the BIOS to disable the onboard GPU and see if you can run with the ATI card with the new drivers. The DMI data at the end of the BIOS portion of the boot will tell you what HW is detected. You can interpret the vendor and device ID via Google. On my machine, and maybe many, hitting Pause/Break will halt the BIOS screen display till another key is hit. These ideas of mine are are free association and not in a logical order. I am just trying to get you thinking of some things to try. Enjoy, John.

EDIT: I assume you have used Ctrl-Alt-Del or some other key(s) to bring up the Task Manager.

Edited August 19, 2010 by johnhc

[Tripredacus]

I disabled both of the IGD adapters detected in Device Manager in Safe Mode. This let me boot into normal mode!

Annoying thing, that's for sure.