Installed video card. Black screen w/ cursor. what now?

[cheekybrew]

Situation:
A friend of mine had the bright idea to move his computer from one area of the room to another without unplugging any of the peripherals. Dropped the computer ripping off several of the onboard VGA pins( yes, the pins that run from the connector to the mobo.)

I have some video cards laying around so i grabbed one and headed over to help him out. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187108 )

I clipped the remaining pins from the mobo and removed the onboard vga port.
Installed the card, expecting some low resolution PnP functionality until i could install the driver. The machine is only a year old so I assume in order to disable the onboard video all I had to do was make the change to pci-e in bios.

Problem:
the computer boots normally until it reaches the desktop. What i am left with is a completely black screen with the cursor.

Am I overlooking something? Is this an OS issue? Should I try using the DVI port on the card instead of the VGA?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[bystander]

Try booting to safe-mode and install the drivers there.

 

[cheekybrew]

I should have mentioned that the same thing happens when i try booting into safe mode.

 

[bystander]

The whole thing sounds like a mess. It is possible the Mobo was damaged by this.

You might try putting in an old HDD and try installing a fresh copy of windows to see if it can work the way it's setup.

 

[cheekybrew]

Im almost entirely convinced that it is an OS issue. Im going to grab a linux live cd and take look at it. maybe a bad file association with the explorer process? going to run chkdsk and see what turns up.