NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE graphics card not showing up in Device Manager

I just got a non-working Vista box from a friend, so I re-imaged the HD with a new version of Vista and the first time I booted it a 'Found New Hardware' dialog box came up with a prompt to install drivers for the GeForce 7300LE graphics card.

I installed the drivers, and of course the system needed a refresh, so it automatically rebooted and when it started back up, I got a BSoD. (I don't remember what the error code was.)

I tried booting again with 'Last Known Good Configuration' and it booted successfully, but the only graphics card that shows up anywhere is a 'Generic VGA driver'.

Add Or Remove Programs shows the NVIDIA drivers as installed, but the card doesn't show up anywhere in the system.

Any idea what is wrong here and what I can do to get my card to work?

• I uninstalled and reinstalled the NVIDIA drivers, and the system crashed (again).
  Maybe part of the problem is bad drivers?

• I downloaded and installed the latest drivers and I got 2 BSoDs (errors 116 and 50)

• The card is (somewhat) working, because there is no onboard graphics. It is currently using a driver from Windows which is just a standard VGA driver (no 3D support of any kind). The problem comes up when I try to use any NVIDIA drivers

• I'm going to try baking it; let's see how that works.

• On boot, there are about 12 groups of four blue vertical lines on the screen during the BIOS boot, the Windows splash screen, and when using a full-screen DOS program. (they go away when Windows boots all the way)

• I talked with some local computer service reps about this, and (@techie007 you seem to be right) they think that it is the card, not the drivers, because of the blue lines. Time to look for a new card.

Solution 1:

That's videocard gone wild. I have the same situation, blue/red/white stripes with hallucinogenic behaviour. In my case it's Geforce 7400 Go that decided to "go".