Resolved Not booting after GPU swap+failed updates

Hey everyone. I need urgent help as I think something really bad just happened.

I recently bought a new graphics card, the Radeon HD 6870. Before that I was running an nVidia GTX 260. Today I replaced the card, and everything went fine until the 6870 drivers refused to install.

I realized it must be because I completely forgot to uninstall the nVidia drivers before replacing the card. When I tried doing so through control panel, the drivers, - display driver, chipset, and PhysX - all refused to uninstall for some reason. It just instantly gave me some error. I was running 260.77 drivers I believe, something like that.

I decided to be clever and downloaded driver sweeper. I didn't want to go back and put in my GTX 260 again as it would be a hassle and I wasn't sure it would help, and thought forcing the drivers out would work. I removed all three things with driver sweeper - basically just cleaned all files and registries that it found for them.

It asked me to reboot - which I did - and now the computer refuses to start. When the Windows 7 logo begins to fly in, a couple seconds in it freezes and then the computer restarts. None of the F8 options seem to work - safe mode also does the same thing.

There's another side to this story, however. Microsoft has recently been putting out a lot of sh*tty Windows updates, a few weeks ago they caused my computer to have extremely slow boot speed (but they fixed that in an update about two weeks later), but last night it installed new updates (I assume it did for you W7 users too, since these are global).

There were 3 updates I think, one was a malicious software fix and two were some random updates, security maybe, I don't remember - I do remember though that one had a 29 (KB29...) in it and the other had a 34 (KB34...). Im sure you all can check your updates and look them up.

Anyway, when I first booted my computer up today (before replacing the card) it would be stuck on 0% of configuring windows updates. Eventually I force restarted, but it was still at 0%. It eventually gave up and let me log in. When I was shutting down to do my card replacement, it again "installed" 2 updates before shutting down. When I replaced the card and booted back up, it again was stuck at 0% and eventually let me in.

I checked the windows updates list and noticed that those two failed (but the malicious software one succeeded, though). I ran the windows update troubleshooter and it did something and then had a check mark with a "Fixed" next to it. I was going to originally remove the updates from the system so they don't bother me anymore but since it said fixed I thought I'd give it another go when I figure out the drivers.

So this is where I sweep out the old nvidia drivers, restart, and now my computer refuses to boot. I'm not sure whether it's because of the drivers (or the lack thereof) or the updates.

This is seriously urgent as I need my computer and I honestly do not know what to do. I'm going to try to put in my old GTX 260 back and see what happens, might also try booting up the windows 7 install CD and see if theres a way I could try to repair it.

Anyway, please respond quickly. Thanks in advance.

UPDATE: Okay, so I first tried inserting my Windows 7 DVD (not retail, I burned it from a digital download, purchased it from the digital river offer a long time ago), but it wouldn't boot - told me to insert a proper boot device or whatever. Then I realized I put the DVD into my CD drive, so I put it into my DVD drive and changed the first boot device in the BIOS boot order settings to the DVD, but it STILL gave me that error! No idea why, I'm going to try googling it right now. But this is a bit of a bummer because I'm unable to try to repair windows as of now.

I tried changing the card back to the 260 as well but that didn't affect anything, still crashes in the same manner. However, since placing the old card back, I've been able to catch a short-lasting blue screen error message that appears just before it crashes. My sister has a good photo camera so she was able to snap photos really fast and we eventually managed to catch the error: http://i54.tinypic.com/3013vy9.jpg This can sound like either the drivers or the updates. But I don't think drivers are capable of destroying windows like this. Doesn't windows just revert to default, miserable versions of drivers if it can't find any? I mean that's what happens when you switch or install new cards anyway, it's capable of booting just fine and then you have to install the drivers. And I know it has nothing to do with the hard drive because that works just fine and I'm sitting on Ubuntu right now (Live CD) and I can browse the hard drive.

I'm going to try to look up the error about the boot device right now but I've got no clue why it won't boot. I can try reburning it, I've luckily saved the thing on my external hard drive, but I don't know if that'll help.

UPDATE 2: Ok... I managed to re-burn a Windows installation CD successfully... At first it wouldn't detect my OS but after some messing around I somehow got it to (I think might have something to do with the boot order). Anyway, I ran quite a lengthy start up repair, the first time before it detected my windows it did it very quickly (probably because it wasnt sure what OS to try to fix), but when it did detect Windows, it took it a good 15 or so minutes of ''attempting repairs.." and then it was done and I clicked finish and it restarted. But, no avail. It didnt work.

I then attempted to run system restore - however to my utter dismay there were no restore points. The reason to this, I remembered, is that I disabled the system restore function to save space on C. Bad mistake. Never thought it'd get me.

I'll try running the start up repair thing again and maybe again since I have nothing better to do. But I really don't know what to do now. I don't want to reinstall windows. Please, help.

 

Yeah my friend told me that the main issue and the cause of this was the failed ati driver. Also I removed the chipset because it also showed up in the uninstall menu and when the display driver wouldn't uninstall it'd say something like "display driver -not removed, chipset - not removed, physx - not selected ". That's why I thought the chipset was related to the card. My mobo is an msi p7n sli platinum btw. Are you sure its not the ati driver that's causing this? And isn't it possible to rebuild mbr with the cmd or something?

 

Reformatted. Thanks for all the help though, Pete. I've backed up everything very well and even have all of the setup files for all my programs ready, in the process of restoring everything now! Those games are going to take away my friday though... But other than that, everything is good and nice and fresh.

PS: I honestly want to express how much I appreciate the dedication to help and support you guys have on this site. I go here every time I have an issue and you folks respond to everything with excellent expertise. I really respect and love that. Thanks guys.

 

I'll check it out. Thanks.