Installing new card goes awry

I recently purchased a Radeon HD 6870 got it in the mail, read up on how to change cards. I first uninstalled the software for the old card, then uninstalled the card its self, turned off the computer, took out the old card, put in the new card, went to boot it up, the computer at this point,smelled smokey i thought, but i couldnt find any signs of smoke, so i kept installed it, let the card boot up, used the cd that came with the card to install the drivers.

At this point i went to watch a movie on my couch with a friend while this was going on, after it installed the new drivers i noticed that my computer wanted to do a disc scan before loading windows, I said sure why not, next thing I know the disc scan is saying "Replacing invalid security id with default security id" it does this for about 30 mins replaces about 30,000 things, I have to wind fixing it, but starting after the invalid security id thing, my card starts showing artificating at the bios screen and and yellow dots when loading windows, plus it wont do a sucessful boot, after a point the pc reboots.

Since this occured, I have reformated windows and reinstalled my old card and send the new one for a replacement because people were telling me I got a DOA card, Newegg is sending me a new one right now.

My current question is, what can I do or should i do to change cards that will keep this mess from happening again, or from my description did I do anything wrong, could it have been only the card??


my system setting are

AZZA Solano 1000R
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R
4gb gskill ddr3
Intel Core i7-930
XFX Radeon HD 4890 1GB
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w