Dell Inspiron 4000 hangs with M3 drivers installed

[Siberian]

My friend's Dell Inspiron 4000 won't boot once the ATI Mobility 3 video drivers are installed. Shortly after the usual Windows startup screen, the screen goes black and freezes there.

I've tried installing fresh copies of both Windows 2000 and Windows 98, completely reformatting the drive each time, with the same result for each. The system boots fine when fresh (no video driver), but hangs during the next startup after installing the M3 driver. If I then uninstall the M3 driver, it boots fine. Install the M3 driver again, and it hangs during the restart. Very consistent.

I also tried installing Windows XP, but it hangs during the first real startup after installation (before I've installed any drivers) exactly as if I had installed the M3 driver already. Perhaps Windows XP includes it?

I'm using the drivers downloaded from the dell site, appropriate for each OS.

I've tried updating the BIOS to the latest version... same results.

Can a flaky CMOS battery cause this? My friend says it had been working fine. But then she packed it away and didn't touch it for months. When she recently unpacked it and started it, the problems started. When I first got it, it was prompting for a DATE & TIME on each boot. I used the SETUP screen to set the date and time, and it does now hold the values between boots. Perhaps it just lost it's charge over the months, and is fine now.

Her main battery is also completely dead. It won't charge or power the computer.

Any suggestions? Might the video hardware simply be failing?

[NooNoo]

I have seen video cards lock up with drivers installed when the video card is failing, so yes this is highly possible... but on a laptop it's a big problem.

Check the display drivers, mebbe something funky is going on between the display drivers and the video drivers. Also check through the bios settings for shared memory and other video settings - try resetting to defaults... bios updates don't always reset the bios to defaults.