boot up lock! help!

[pipedreamz]

i have an HP A1630N from fry's running xp media center edition 2005.

i installed the nvidia geforce 7950GT and it was running great for a few weeks. i installed programs and games here and there no problem.

then one day i come home, it is auto rebooted and stuck in the XP startup screen with the progress bar that motions to the right. there is no hard drive/ram activity (no led blinking).

i turn it off hard, by holding in the power. then turn it on again, same problem.

again with last known good config, same problem,

again in safe mode w/ networking, it works. the first time it says there is a problem with the video device driver.

i uninstall and reboot, same problem.

i boot in safe w/ networking, it boots up. i reinstall the driver off of the nvidia site. reboot, same problem.

with the driver installed, i reboot in safe mode, and use system restore.

HERE IS THE PART THAT BAFFLES ME.

sometimes restoring to a point will not work and it will lock as usual, then i boot up in safe mode and go to an earlier spot, it works. the only thing that is labeled is the software support services 2.0 in all of these restore points.

once it successfully reboots in system restore, i immediately reboot again to see what happens, it locks up again.

basically, this problem is recurring and i have to go through the above steps to get a good boot up and it is a major pain in the neck. practically every morning or afternoon i will see the computer has rebooted itself and locked up.

--i have set the initial boot setup to look for pci express for video on the start.

i am completely baffled. any suggestions?

[goldtoes]

Okay, well what did you change in between the day it happened and the restore points you are picking? If you installed a game, update a driver, etc. that is most likely the cuplrit.

Did you try going to nVidia's website and downloading the latest drivers for the card? If you used the included drivers that came on the CD, they are outdated and could use updated...it wouldn't hurt.

If this doesn't work, and you have a XP disk, I would try a repair and see if that does anything.