PC won't post, then does, then does'nt - suspect video card

[bullwinkle]

3 days ago my PC stopped posting...no beep, nothing.  2 days ago, same thing.  Yesterday, it posted (I didn't do anything) but the resolution was at the lowest level and wouldn't change.  After turning it off, it wouldn't post again.

Suspecting the video cards (Geforce 8800 GT SLI), I removed them both and then installed nr. 2 board.  I got 1 long beep, 3 short ones - no video card.  I then installed card nr. 1 and it booted however I still have terrible resolution that won't change.  I'm having trouble just writing this.  I tried card nr. 2 a second time there was no post, no beeps so it is obviously bad.  It looks like card nr. 1 is OK except for the resolution.

Do I need new drivers for this card?  I've tried to download them but the resolution is so bad it's very difficult to know what you're doing.  If this needs to be done, can you give me the step-by-step procedure please?

Or is this another problem?

Windows XP sp3
ASUS A8N SLI Premium mb
AMD CPU Athlon 64 FX-60 DualCore 2600 MHz nVidia nForce4 chipset
BIOS Award Phoenix 8/10/06
3G memory

thank you

[DaveLembke]

When running with just 1 video card are you switching the flip board from SLI enabled to SLI disabled?

If you go to NVidia's website they have an app that you can run that will autodetect the correct driver for your video card. If the app doesn't work for some reason with Windows XP which it should still work with it, you can navigate to the Geforce 8 Series and download that driver and install that.

What is strange though is that the driver you already had running should work with the single card without a video driver update. I am almost wondering if this strange poor graphics of single card is the result of that SLI flip board not being changed in which there is a malfunction when its seeking the other board that isn't present and so it runs in a poor low end video resolution.

[bullwinkle]

I went into Device Manager, right clicked on the 8800 gt card, and selected update driver.

It updated, rebooted, and now everything is back to normal - just a bit dimmer than before.

Thanks!