Uninstalling ATI Display Drivers hosed my system!

[SRam_z]

You see it all the time: "Make sure to update your display drivers to the
latest version." So, I did. I have an ASUS (ATI Radeon) HD3850 PCIe display
card. I did exactly what it said to do: Go to 'Add or Remove Programs' and
click on the "ATI Software Removal Utility" then follow the prompts, restart
the system and install the new (latest) drivers.
However, when I restarted, I got the Windows starting screen (with the
moving bar) and that's it! At the point where I should be looking at the
"Welcome" screen - I'm instead looking at a black screen. As though the
monitor is turned off. (It isn't, though; the light is green.) There is about
20 more seconds of hard drive activity, then nothing. Keyboard does not work;
nothing. My only recourse is to hit reset, or the power button. Yes, yes;
I've utilized every option in the boot menu (via F8) and it responds to each
the same way! All three "Safe Mode" options are useless, as well.
As if this wasn't enough; I decided that I better try and repair what was
wrong, so I popped in my Windows XP Media Center Edition v:2005, Disk 1 and
proceeded to boot to it. Setup, of course, begins its ritual and makes it
through the initial filecopy phase; then it says "Setup is starting Windows"
and a moment later - black screen. I waited over an hour, during one of these
sessions, sill nothing. It won't recover, after I turn off - then back on.
Finally, even though I know that there is nothing wrong with my HD3850, I
decided to pop in my previous card and see if that would help. Nope.
Naturally, this is because it, too, is an ATI card!
Logic dictates that if I were to install an nVidia card, I would likely have
visual once again. Reality, I'm afraid, dictates that I can't afford such a
troubleshooting path.
My system consists of:

ASUS P5ND2-SLI Mainboard
ASUS EAH3850 Top/G/HIDI/512M/A GDDR 3 Video Card
2GB Patriot DDR2 RAM
ViewSonic P225f Professional Series CRT

Windows XP MCE 2005 (Although, I don't use the MCE features at all; so it's
technically the equivalent of XP Professional, SP2.)

Other than the display drivers, I am absolutely certain that the system is
up-to-date!
Note that I have not upgraded to Service Pack 3 yet; but the OS is
up-to-the-minute, as of Oct 7, 2008.

Sorry for the length. I'm at my wits-end here; any ideas? Thanks, very much,
for reading this far!

 

[M.I.5¾]

You see it all the time: "Make sure to update your display drivers to the
latest version." So, I did. I have an ASUS (ATI Radeon) HD3850 PCIe
display
card. I did exactly what it said to do: Go to 'Add or Remove Programs' and
click on the "ATI Software Removal Utility" then follow the prompts,
restart
the system and install the new (latest) drivers.
However, when I restarted, I got the Windows starting screen (with the
moving bar) and that's it! At the point where I should be looking at the
"Welcome" screen - I'm instead looking at a black screen. As though the
monitor is turned off. (It isn't, though; the light is green.) There is
about
20 more seconds of hard drive activity, then nothing. Keyboard does not
work;
nothing. My only recourse is to hit reset, or the power button. Yes, yes;
I've utilized every option in the boot menu (via F8) and it responds to
each
the same way! All three "Safe Mode" options are useless, as well.
As if this wasn't enough; I decided that I better try and repair what was
wrong, so I popped in my Windows XP Media Center Edition v:2005, Disk 1
and
proceeded to boot to it. Setup, of course, begins its ritual and makes it
through the initial filecopy phase; then it says "Setup is starting
Windows"
and a moment later - black screen. I waited over an hour, during one of
these
sessions, sill nothing. It won't recover, after I turn off - then back on.
Finally, even though I know that there is nothing wrong with my HD3850, I
decided to pop in my previous card and see if that would help. Nope.
Naturally, this is because it, too, is an ATI card!
Logic dictates that if I were to install an nVidia card, I would likely
have
visual once again. Reality, I'm afraid, dictates that I can't afford such
a
troubleshooting path.
My system consists of:

ASUS P5ND2-SLI Mainboard
ASUS EAH3850 Top/G/HIDI/512M/A GDDR 3 Video Card
2GB Patriot DDR2 RAM
ViewSonic P225f Professional Series CRT

Windows XP MCE 2005 (Although, I don't use the MCE features at all; so
it's
technically the equivalent of XP Professional, SP2.)

Other than the display drivers, I am absolutely certain that the system is
up-to-date!
Note that I have not upgraded to Service Pack 3 yet; but the OS is
up-to-the-minute, as of Oct 7, 2008.

Sorry for the length. I'm at my wits-end here; any ideas? Thanks, very
much,
for reading this far!

I think there is one thing that you forgot to do before you uninstalled the
Graphics driver. You should have set the display to 640x480 resolution and
8 bit colour. This would force windows to use the default VGA driver for
the graphics (which all graphic cards support). Since presumably you
didn't, windows is trying to use whatever resolution you left it at and
which it can't find a supporting driver.

So: try this.

1. Boot into safe mode (this should use the VGA mode by default) and into
the Administrator account.

2. Right click on desktop, select 'Properties' and then the 'Settings' tab.
You will note that the resolution is set to 640x480 and 8 bit colour (select
it if it isn't). You will also note that the 'Apply' button is not greyed
out. Click the apply button *and* the 'OK' (note that in this case 'OK'
does not include 'Apply').

3. Now back out and reboot normally. You should now get a display albeit at
VGA resolution.

You should now be able to install your graphic card driver and once you have
done so, be able to select a higher resolution. You may have to reboot as
you go to get the higher colour resolutions available.

In general terms, I am always reluctant to install a newer driver for
anything unless there is a particular problem that the new driver solves or
some functionality demanded by something I am installing.

 

[SRam_z]

I can't boot into safe mode. When I try, I see the paths to all of the
necessary drivers that are being loaded, in a long list on my screen. The
last one, in the list, is vidstub.sys - then it switches to the black screen.
I've tried all three of the safe mode options available, and get the same
results. As I said, I can't even get get Setup to work.