Installed diamond radeon 4650 video card, resolution and display seemed perfect without any driver installed. However, once i installed the driver off of the CD that came with the video card, upon rebooting after installing, the screen goes to complete blank after the WINDOWS loading-splash screen.

Although the screen is blank/idle, I know that the computer's still running because after the screen goes blank I still hear the windows start up sound and I can shut down the computer by alt+f4ing and hitting 'U."

The video card works fine in safe mode, so I know 100% that it's not a matter of settings. It seems to be the driver that's the problem. GIVEN the case, is there anything I can do?

Just a small background info: I tried radeon 4550 2 days ago and it worked perfectly(after installing the driver) and decided to return it and got 4650 since I could get it brand new for cheap. I uninstalled the PREVIOUS driver completely(from control panel add/remove. not 100% sure if this removes it for good) and installed the new one and got the blank screen syndrome.


PC specs:

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz 4.28GHz (tried un-overclocking, didn't FIX the issue)
3.25GB RAM
ep45-ud3lr motherboard
windows XP pro service pack 1 32 bit


Thank you for any suggestion you could offer.
You could try a different driver - download the latest one and transfer it to that machine when you boot in safe mode (or sue safe mode with networking to get net access).
UNINSTALL the old drivers with add/remove programs, reboot again into safe mode, and install the new ones.
Hope this helps.The driver that's on the CD said it was version 5.6

I visited the website and already tried downloading the version 5.1(the latest one on the website for the given product). Uninstalled the version 5.6, installed the 5.1 -- This produced the same problem of booting fine with blank screen -> display working in safe mode(I currently have the version 5.1 and running in safe mode).

Kind of sucks how the display seems to work at great resolutions without any drivers and crash completely after installing supposedly appropriate drivers...Version 5.6/5.1? Where are you getting the drivers from?
Use the ATI site.5.6 is the version shown on the CD on the installation screen

5.1 is the version given on the website which in turn is given by the CD which came with the video card.

I'm looking at the website you've provided me with, and it says it requires windows XP service pack 2 or higher, whereas the box says just XP... could that be the issue? Anyway, I'm trying to d/l and try that out, will report resulttried it out, same issue :/

i had the same problem with my 4650 and it took me ages to sort it out. i had to go to the radeon website and download the latest driver but you will need to upgrade to service pack 2 or better, i installed just the driver and the catalyst control, but i did not include the folding at home pack and this did the trick. hope this helps?