So I was in the middle of playing Diablo3 and then all of a sudden to my horror my computer seemed to just completely shut off.
The worst part was it wouldn't boot up at all, it wouldn't even get to the main BIOS screen, needless to say I instantly thought the worst; my computer just died. I didn't know if it was the motherboard, my harddrive, my graphics card or any other number of problems.
I tried several times to get my computer to boot up but nothing was working, so I decided to take my poor graphics card out and use my onboard graphics card instead and VOILA! my computer started to boot up which left me pretty upset because that meant my graphics card is toast and even worse BFG Tech (the company that made the card) had gone bankrupt and no longer exists.
All was well for a little bit until I decided to buy a new graphics card ... It seems that if you don't have the graphics card actually installed you can't remove the drivers for the card. I was fine running my onboard graphics no problem but the resolution wasn't the greatest and it just wasn't anywhere near what I had previously had with my GeForce GTS 250.
My new card is an AMD Radeon HD 6670 and doesn't use NVIDIA at all since it's an AMD card which causes tremendous problems.
I figured it was a simple process (like it used to be "back in the day") I just install the new card, switch the cable from my onboard graphics card to the new Radeon card and it will boot up, detect the card and ask for the drivers. Ha ha ha ha how naive was I? Completely ... since my computer wouldn't get past the "Starting Windows" screen. So I tried safemode and that did the same thing, it just sat there for hours and did nothing, so I tried Windows repair by pressing F8 right after the BIOS screen until the Windows 7 "Repair Windows" option came up in the DOS boot menu.
This gives you a few options to test out, a hardware memory test which I figured would be a good idea to try because I figured it might detect the fact that the card died and had to be removed without a proper uninstallation. It didn't ... that didn't fix anything. While I was trying all of this I attempted to remove the new card and hook it back up to the onboard graphics which I could get to load Windows once successfully and I was able to remove NVIDIA completely no problems but when I shut the computer off I installed the new card and booted up and it hung again.
I think this is where my first problem came up, I should have restarted normally using my onboard graphics card still and make sure EVERYTHING for NVIDIA was removed, even using "Driver Sweeper" as many people on forums recommend. Then shut down the computer and install the new card.
But I didn't do that instead I had more issues because I shut down and installed the card immediately after removing NVIDIA via the Add / Remove Programs feature in Windows, either way I ended up restoring the computer to an earlier time TWICE successfully but still ran into the same issues and since I went back to an earlier time when I had NVIDIA installed BOOM ! there it was again and I couldn't remove it for the life of me, I couldn't reinstall it because the card is fried and it won't let you do anything if it doesn't detect the card yet there it remains installed and unable to be removed. I mean you can highlight it and click uninstall / change and it does nothing at all, you can right click it and choose uninstall and still it does nothing. I tried using CCleaner to uninstall it same issue.
So I moved the folders from Program Files and Program Files (x86) restarted and installed the drivers for the new card and they actually installed this time, I still have NVIDIA in my Add / Remove Programs and I think it's causing some kind of conflict still because my resolution is 1920x1080 but the card is supposed to be able to display much more than that so I don't know.
I sent a help ticket into the manufacturer of the new card to see if they have any solutions that might work.
Needless to say at least my computer works now and I'm able to research my issue further.
I think the crucial thing that I overlooked from the beginning was the fact that you have to remove ALL traces of NVIDIA from your system before switching to an AMD card and disabling my onboard graphics card before installing the drivers for the new card.
Either way I'm sure I made many errors and now I think the only way to fix the issue is to install windows again.
Hope this helps you avoid some of the same problems.