I hope this is the right forum!
I had to restore an HP M470n using restore disks. It worked for a while but now xp won't boot normally, I think it's the video card, but not sure. In device manager the Radeon 9550 is showing as VGA controller with no drivers installed, the radeon is not listed anywhere? We have had to restore this pc several times (kids pc) and had no problems, this time we are having major probs I have restored it 3 times now with the same outcome, works for a few hours and than when I reboot it it gets stucks at the windows xp flag screen, I can however boot into safe mode. We have pulled the video card out and put it back in to make sure it was seated properly, and checked all other connections, didn't work. Not sure where to fo from here. Any ideas?

Thanks

I have use recovery discs on both hp and Sony PCs some times it is best to do a full HDD erase before doing the recovery. But remember you do so at your oun risk.

Does the Radeon 9550 you are using have a cooling fan attached to the card (some 9550 models do, some don't). If so, is the fan spinning? I've have a dead fan on a vid card cause the same symptoms. If that isn't the problem, do you have a spare video card you can through in there, just to see if it is indeed the video card causing the problem? Freeze ups & random reboots can be caused by numerous things & are sometimes difficult to narrow down. On the hardware side, you can also check to make sure all cooling fans (CPU, PSU, case, board) are functioning. It could also be a bad stick of RAM, or a power supply issue. On the software side, it could be a bad driver, some recent software you installed, virus &/or malware.

Otis

Amen