Little PC problem (not mine for once!)

OK, I was wondering if you guys had any ideas regarding this:

A mate of mine's computer will not install any graphics card drivers because it does not have enough free resources to install the PCI-PCI bridge drivers for the AGP socket. Nasty!

I've removed everything from the system and disabled all on board devices that weren't required, and quite frankyly run out of ideas.

Removing and re-installing the PCI bus has worked in similar situations before, as this forces a re-install of all HW plugged into the system.

The mobo is an Abit NF7 S2G, The same mobo that I had in my old computer, with no issues, the card installed is a Hercules GForce 4500.

My system had a Gforce 4200 with no problems at all, so it's strange if this card doesn't work in it.

His card works in another system fine BTW.

So, any ideas what to try next? Other than a system reinstall and hope...

I'd go for the last thing you mentioned!! :p

Start windows in SAFE MODE... uninstall the old grpaphics card... install new software and reboot in regular mode.

ALSO run RegEdit by Junio Vuori to see whats really in the startup... (actually I would do that first!!!)

Hmm..

The problem is that there are no GFX driver loaded, because windows fails to load the driver for the AGP socket. There has never been any installe GFX drivers by the looks of it.

I've already cleaned up the startup, other things.. The system's clean. I can't figure this one out. I guess a re-install is necesary!

iwas just wondering if anyone had a similar problem before :)

Put another card in and see if the system will come back to a semblance of normality...failing that..er, clean the guk out of the mouse.

Try loading Optimized BIOS defaults. Also try clearing the DMI data. You should also try updating the bios with the latest availiable. When updating the bios make sure it clears/writes all the blocks of the bios. Not just the main ones. Also try disabling ports such as Serial and Parallel. There might be some other device using up IRQ10 (which is used for video devices). You might even need to install latest motherboard drivers... or even... reinstall Windows.

Sounds like ACPI is not active and Windows is trying to cram everything into limited IRQ space. Bad new is, AFAIK, this means reinstalling Windows. I may be wrong, but I have heard of this problem before. It's rare (because ACPI is rarely disabled during a Windows reinstall).

Some (possibly unrelated, but you never know) things to check in the BIOS:

AGP aperture set to 64MB.
Memory hole at 16MB = No
IRQ Assignments = All to 'Auto'
USB Keyboard Support = Set to 'OS'

If any onboard PCI devices (networking, sound, RAID) are switched off in the BIOS, switch them on. This may sound counterintuitive, but it fixed a problem I once had when installing Windows.

Have a look-see in the Windows event logs as well, there may be some entries which can give you a clue.

Oh, I just remembered, to check if ACPI is enabled, bring up Device Manager. If the main thingy isn't an 'ACPI PC', then ACPI is off.

Vinyl:

I've successfully re-installed ACPI stuff before, thanks. I'll give it ago.

Leiden: Done all that :)

Hujiklo.. no, other cards dont work either, this is a slot issue. :)

Here's a stupid question for me to ask, have you tried using the auto-detect in the Add Hardware Wizard?

That thing seems to actually work/install the Windows driver defaults when you least expect it....

Windows detects the hardware, and even installs the drivers, but the drivers wont work because the device is out of resources.