Connected a second monitor and now after reboot screen pops up with purple and blue..

[Bansin]

I plugged in a second monitor to my GTX 280 and easily had both running. After a single restart both monitors no longer boot up with a good visual to the desktop. It's a unintelligible mess of purple and blue that is indescribable.

I've disconnected one. Tried both separately. I've booted to safe mode which I am in now and reloaded the latest drivers. I've run windows Vista Repair and nothing there.

I've set the resolution to rock bottom to see if a cross compatibility issue occurred(Where the smaller monitor picked up as the main and couldn't compute.

The major issue is that the computer is actually "locking" up on me. In a couple instances the computer screamed at me as if the video card was not plugged in yet this happened after going through the Vista boot sequence and loading to desktop where it freezes up.

Someone throw me something to try because I'm out of ideas at the moment.

FYI: I also just got a G15 keyboard and a razor Mamba mouse but both were perfectly fine and involved multiple reboots with these devices operating before I had done the second monitor.

 

[paco16]

Re-seat your video cards... Also make sure the power connector to the cards is reseated. Next, check the pins on your monitor cables (both sides) and make sure there aren't any bent pins. Finally, remove the Nvidia drivers completely after booting the machine back up(safe mode of not). Run a registry scan to make sure all traces of the Nvidia driver are gone before you re-install the driver. Good luck Bansin and update us!

Hint- Ccleaner has a decent, unobtrusive registry scanner that works great! (free utility too!)

 

[Bansin]

Thanks, I'll let you know as soon as I get a chance to try. Also some more strangeness I'll update later.

 

[Exeodus]

It could also be your CPU overclock doing it. Try turning it back to stock and see if that helps. I have seen a system that is overclocked get unstable or cause issues like yours when you attempt a multiple GPU setup.

 

[Bansin]

There's one GTX 280 and I utilized the second connector in the back. Strangely the desktop tool bar and window's all went from the soft rounded edged UI to a very square old style UI. I had a great deal of other tasks today and didn't get to sit down and clean the drivers.

Strangely vista is working again but in a manner described above. I was able to reconnect the second monitor and it worked. Restarted once and nothing changed. It was still squarish and different. Also Vista requested Drivers but didn't specify at all what piece of hardware it was wanting them for. I tried several drivers for my main monitor, for my video card, for my new G15 Keyboard, for my Razor Mamba, etc. Nothing queued. Tried Windows Vista disk, nothing there either. So what the hell was it wanting a driver for?

 

[paco16]

I'd go back to one card... clean up what you need to clean up and make sure Vista is working fine before installing that second card. Once Vista is running properly, set a restore point (for giggles) and install the second card. The Nvidia drivers that you've re-installed should pick up the second card with no issues.
If you've got multiple issues, you'll need to be a "techie" and isolate individual issues if at all possible.

 

[Bansin]

RMA'ed the card.

I put in my old card and no problems.

Put in the New card and couldn't boot to desktop anymore, it did a striped nasty random colors thing. All my BIOS settings were standard.

Luckily had 2 days before I couldn't RMA. If the problem persists with a new card I'll know what to try and will be backing up my stuff to reload my system shortly.

I'm certain the card was malfunctioning because after putting two monitors on it the damn thing went to hell and didn't change output with one or not. And I find it unlikely a drivers issue because I was using the card for a solid month before this happened.