Repairing and Upgrading Your PC

Installing a Video Card

Installing a video card is generally straightforward, but there are a couple gotchas to watch out for:

• If you are installing an AGP card on a motherboard with a non-Intel chipset, you may need to install a GART driver before you physically install the video card or its drivers. Skipping this step can cause Windows to black-screen at boot. Follow the instructions supplied with the new video card to install the GART driver.

• The presence of old video drivers may cause problems with the installation of the new card. You may need to use Safe Mode (press F8 while the system boots and choose Safe Mode from the menu) to uninstall the old video drivers before installing the new video card or, if the current video adapter is dead, as the first step after installing the new video card.

SAFE MODE VERSUS VGA MODE

Pressing F8 during boot displays the Windows Advanced Options Menu, which offers several choices. The first option, Safe Mode, starts the system with everything disabled except the essentials—no networking or sound, only a vanilla 640x480 VGA video driver, and so on. We use Safe Mode during troubleshooting to minimize the number of variables that may be causing the problem. If for some reason you prefer to start the system in what we call Safe Video Mode—with all drivers loading normally except that the vanilla 640x480 video driver is used—choose Enable VGA Mode instead of Safe Mode.

If you buy a retail-boxed video card, it will include a comprehensive manual. If ...