I hope not to make this too long... but i want to go into as much detail as possible!

I built a pc for a friend over a year ago, average spec, 2400 xp athlon, asus a7v600-x, 512 ram, maxator 40 gb HDD, Sapphire 9200 ATI graphics card.

Last week the PC would not boot, and gave a long beep and Three short beeps which after research pointed to the Graphics Card. I removed the graphics card and inserted my Radeon 9800 pro, the PC booted no problem..

I tried the 9200 in my PC and would not boot... so i diagnose the card has had it! So i oreder a replacement, 3d Connect ATI 9600 128 MB, my 9800 is from the same manufacturer and i have had no bother with it at all.

I receive the card today, i am aware that all the old drivers should be removed from the pc, but i could not think of a way of doing it as the old card would not boot, but i managed to uninstall all the software related programs etc but i did this while my 9800 pro was in the pc.

So i install the card, boot up and windows finds devices etc, i insert cd, let it do all the installing. After the install the screen resolution is poor 800 x 600/640 x 420??? Anyway i change this to 1024 x 768 and my screen goes blank... and nothing comes back, i leave it for a minute, but the pc reboots... it boots, i get to log in screen and reboots... this cycle continues!! So i hit F8 at start and i see VGA setup mode, i go to this and i managed to log in on a safe mode type setting i suppose. I try to edit the screen resolution again but no joy and i get a reboot.

I then do the VGA mode again and this time i uninstall the drivers in device manager, i get the instructions, and start reading...

1. it goes on about Updating your AGP Mobo chipset drivers if the graphics card has a AGP bus... my knowladge of pc's is ok but this means nothing to me

2. Windows may start the "Add new hardware wizard" To install the Card correctly "Cancel the wizard if using 2000 or XP" I realise i did not cancel this on the first install, so i boot the pc cancel the windows install pop ups, and proceed to install the card off the driver cd.

I thought all was going too well, i restart on prompt, i log in and start flicking though menus, load web pages etc, i do this for about 5 minutes, thinking great sorted, i turn my back to tidy up and the pc has rebooted!!

So if anyone has managed to stay awake through this rather long episode, it has used up 4 hours of my evening, which i was intending it would only take 30 minutes

I would be greatful of any further action, i have not tried the card in my own pc due to fear of messing up the settings

Thanks in advance... i am going to find a beer!!

Ok so i have made a little bit more progress in the fight to make the Radeon 9600 work...

After reading countless reviews and problems about it, its seems a very problimatic card, unfortunatly this was not mentioned on the site i purchased the card from, so serves me right!!

Anyway, i uninstalled the drivers (again) and have downloaded a little program called driver cleaner, i selected all the ATI options to be removed, hoping it would also remove the ATI's older drivers from the previous card, it found many files which i was pleased about!

I then went onto the ATI webpage and downloaded the latest catalyst drivers, and also frameworks 2.0 which was a required download!!! I have now installed both of these, and the latest version of direct x. And the card is now running stable doing basic tasks, like web pages, office, and even photoshop.

Unfortunatly there is still something wrong... when something graphic intensive is loaded, the screen blacks out like before! Now i say graphic intensive... its not a gaming machine, but i think the card should be able to handle a fair load, but the screen blacked out whilst i was loading google earth!

So i know something is still wrong, does it sound like a faulty card? Or is there something i am missing?