Thanks again for your help.

not entirely clear on which CD to create.

If I get no picture (totally blank screen) when windows loads, do I have no monitor drivers?

__________________
'90 300SE 298k
-300K and it gets put into retirement.
'80 300D 255k Purchased new by family in 1980.

Had a:
1973 220 (gas)
1980 300SD
1992 400E

I don`t think that`s your problem. I think your resolution is set to high for the monitor. As someone said earlier, you can do a system recovery from an XP boot disk. Do some reading on bootdisk.com. It will tell you what you need.

__________________
99 ML320
94 SL600
92 SL500
95 E320 Cabriolet
87 560SEC
86 300SDL Grease Car
80 380SLC Euro

13 Fiat Abarth
02 Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa
00 BMW Z3
90 Rolls Royce Silver Spur
80 Ferrari 308 GTSI
88 Jaguar XJS12 H&E Edition
99 Land Rover Discovery

I am hesitant to use a bootdisk- is there a risk of losing data?

The video is onboard - that is, there is nothing in either the AGP or PCI slots.

If I throw a PCI video card in there, will XP auto-detect it and begin to use it- windows start normally- just with no picture?

As to safe mode- hangs on the driver mup.sys inboth SM and SM/w/command console.

Any ideas?

Thanks

__________________
'90 300SE 298k
-300K and it gets put into retirement.
'80 300D 255k Purchased new by family in 1980.

Had a:
1973 220 (gas)
1980 300SD
1992 400E

You won`t lose any data with a boot disk unless you delete it. You can put another video card in, but you have to disable the onboard video processer. What are the specs of your computer? Make and model number would be nice.

__________________
99 ML320
94 SL600
92 SL500
95 E320 Cabriolet
87 560SEC
86 300SDL Grease Car
80 380SLC Euro

13 Fiat Abarth
02 Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa
00 BMW Z3
90 Rolls Royce Silver Spur
80 Ferrari 308 GTSI
88 Jaguar XJS12 H&E Edition
99 Land Rover Discovery

OK-

I threw my graphics card from another computer in it and let it boot normally.

No picture- same as before.

Restarted and I got my picture back- XP loaded the drivers.

NOW, I need to take this graphics card back out- can someone tell me exactly how to set this back to the onboard video card?

thanks

__________________
'90 300SE 298k
-300K and it gets put into retirement.
'80 300D 255k Purchased new by family in 1980.

Had a:
1973 220 (gas)
1980 300SD
1992 400E

More info-

motherboard is VIA vt8235
windows XP SP2

__________________
'90 300SE 298k
-300K and it gets put into retirement.
'80 300D 255k Purchased new by family in 1980.

Had a:
1973 220 (gas)
1980 300SD
1992 400E

At the BIOS screen go into the setup menu by either F1 or some key which it specifies and in the integrated peripherals or some menu of that nomenclature you should be able to toggle the onboard video on and or off and change the priority from PCI/PCI Express/AGP etc.

__________________
1974 240D 3.0L 4(M) - 250K -OM617.910 + 300D FW + Rajay turbo power!
1977 6.9 3(A) - 84k

Thanks diametrical - I am back in business.

__________________
'90 300SE 298k
-300K and it gets put into retirement.
'80 300D 255k Purchased new by family in 1980.

Had a:
1973 220 (gas)
1980 300SD
1992 400E