I swapped hard drives in computers at work so I could keep all my settings, programs, data, etc. when I changed to a better computer. One of the computers did fine and detected all the new hardware, but the other won't boot up. It gets to the windows screen and then gives the stop error "The video driver failed to initialize" and then does a physical memory dump. I have tried to boot in safe mode, safe mode w/ networking, safe mode w/ command prompt, enable vga mode, last known good configuration, every single option that it gives,as well as the I/O fix of the parallel port that Microsoft gives on their website, but it always gives the same stop error. The only way I can get to a command prompt is to change the boot sequence to check cd rom and put a cd in there. I have tried taking the old video card and installing it too, but that doesn't help. I would appreciate any help anyone could give me.

exact same conditions, but my laptop went into this mode after it went to VGA mode, wouldn't go to 800x600... and then when it seemed as though I was successful shrinking the fonts and icons point size manually, after reboot I got the 'video driver failed to initialize' error... have not been able to find any fix on the web so far