I've just walk into the same problem, no display adapter in the device manager on a win xp/athlon 1.1. After trying a newer adapter, the same, more colors were allowed but no more resolution 800x600 max but now 32bits. The new vga card is a nvidia 440mx 128ddr and the anterior rage 2c 32, but this is not the matter. Reinstalled xp, and now i have a display adapter and a monitor there in device manager. Before i was unable to access the monitor config, nor the properties of the card displayed it's features, all greyed out. So, the matter is in xp (probably 2k too) but never seen this before. If this can help... But now my problem is when trying to fix the 1st installation, i've disabled vgasave in device manager. Now it seems xp starting ok, but no display at all after the text part! So, can I restore at least to the previous situation, enabling vgasave in some way, and even better get back a display adapter or reinstall all again?? this was just a 15mn job...