Freezing on Boot-up after install of ATI Radeon HD 3650

Hey Tom's Hardware Community,

Hopefully the Gurus of this forum can shine some light on some issues I've been having with my PC as of late. I'm currently running a rig that consists of:

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Mainboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
2gb DDR2 800mhz RAM
SoundBlaster Audity 7.1 SC
nVidia 8600GT Graphics Card
Windows XP Pro SP2

recently my 8600GT burnt out on me (presumably due to my power supply) and as a temporary solution I picked up a budget video card to make ends meet until I can overhaul the entire computer. The card of choice was an ATI Radeon HD 3650. ATI has treated me well in the past and at the price-point it was hard to pass up. I picked up that card and an additional 2GB stick of DDR2 800mhz RAM to add onto my computer. After properly installing both items, I booted up my computer at which time, everything was running perfectly. I began installing the driver CD that came with the graphics card. It seemed to go through the install process smoothly, but then randomly my computer restarted itself. I initially blew it off and attributed it to me not paying attention and it auto-restarting as per usual when a new piece of software is installed, however, upon restart I get to the screen where it tells you "Windows has shut down abruptly" and gives you the options to start in Safe-Mode/Revert to nearest working setup/Start Windows Normally etc. You can arrow through all the options just fine, but the second you press enter to execute any of the aforementioned startup modes, the computer freezes. I checked the BIOS and made sure the nVidia onboard graphics were disabled and that the PCI-Express slot was the default graphics port. Still having the same issue. I thought it may have been the stick of ram, but I've tried it with just the old RAM prior to upgrade and also individual sticks in varying slots just to make sure it wasn't bad RAM, all of which result in the same ending, freezing upon choosing a startup option for Windows. I know I installed everything correctly and I would simply pull out the 3650 and reinstall the 8600GT to see if it boots up correctly as a test, but my old video card is burnt out and if I were to reinstall it, I'd simply get a black screen with nothing at all, which makes it quite hard to test if it's the video card. At this point I'm sitting back scratching my head wondering what could be causing this, as I said initially after the install, it started up fine. Anyone have any ideas on what this could be and/or maybe some steps I could take to resolve this issue in a time efficient and conservative money-wise way? Any help would be much appreciated!

Best Regards-

I have this exact same problem. starts up as normal without HD3650 drivers installed but as soon as install them and reboot freezes at the loading bar screen. then have to restart in safe mode in order to uninstall the drivers for it to startup normally.