Uninstalling Nvidia drivers killed PC

[Coherence]

My girlfriend wanted to upgrade her Nvidia 8800GTS video driver. After downloading the update, she went into Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the original driver. The options in Add/Remove Programs included "Nvidia Drivers" and "Nvidia Forceware." She selected "Nvidia Drivers."

She had accidentally clicked to remove ALL Nvidia drivers, not just the display driver. I told her to cancel what she had selected, and watched her follow the prompts to cancel the uninstall, but the complete ForceWare uninstaller ran anyway!

Now her PC has become useless! The mouse and keyboard do not work once WindowsXP loads. We've swapped out the USB keyboard and mouse for old DB-9 keyboards and mice, but it still does not allow us to log into Windows.

Is there any way to get her PC to work again? I really don't want to reinstall Windows and have her lose everything. We tried running in "Last Known Good Configuration" and "Safe Mode" and neither one worked.

 

[JustaGeek]

Repair Install the Windows Installation with the Windows CD.

 

[Coherence]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
Repair Install the Windows Installation with the Windows CD.

Yeah, actually we did that. Now she has no network connectivity, even after reinstalling her mobo drivers. Neither the built-in wireless, nor the two built-in ethernet adapters work.

This is getting really frustrating. I've uninstalled the devices, reran Add New Hardware, and reinstalled the drivers. I've tried it 50 different ways, and I still can't get more than "Limited or no connectivity" out of it, which is useless.

 

[vailr]

Try Driver Cleaner; run while booted in F8 Safe Mode:
http://public.planetmirror.com...ools/dcprosetup_15.zip
also try:
Uninstall Hidden Driver
=====================
"Set Device Manager up to show Non-Present devices and delete the hidden device.

"1. Please click "Start" menu => click "Run" => type "cmd" <without quotation marks> and click "OK"

"2. Please type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1" <without quotation marks> in the command prompt.

"3. Please type "start devmgmt.msc" to launch "Device Manager".

"4. Please click "View" menu in "Device Manager" and choose "Show hidden device".

"5. Please expand all items in the panel, if any hidden device listed below, please delete them. (The hidden device is shown in a transparent color.)

"6. Please right-click the hidden devices and click "Uninstall".

 

[Coherence]

Well, after the Repair install didn't help, we reinstalled fresh on top of it, and everything worked. But, since she still has to reinstall her programs (due to their Registry entries being gone), she decided to wipe the drive completely with DBAN, anyway. She didn't want to just delete the folders of the stuff she no longer wanted.

So, 9.5 hrs later, and 3.5 hrs left to go, we are still waiting for DBAN to finish wiping the drive, since she insisted on using the 7-pass DOD wipe.

Anyone here need a new girlfriend? After this, mine may be on the market again soon. *JK*