I was checking my control panel today and noticed that my video card (AIW 9600XT) is showing up twice in the Device Manager. The second one shows up as a secondary device for some reason. I tried uninstalling it but every time I reboot windows, it keeps automatically reinstalling drivers for this phantom secondary video card. Why is this happening and how can I permenantely get rid of it? Thanks

No idea why it would appear twice in devicemanager list. My question to you is however "Does the existence of this second entry in devicemanager affect the performance of the system in any way or is this just a personal annoyance?" Have you checked the Properties tab for both instances? Are they both listed as using the same resources/IRQ number? Same driver? I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

The main entry shows an IRQ of 16, the secondary shows no IRQ at all just two memory ranges. The reason I checked into this is that I've been occasionally getting "IRQ_greater_or_lesser" blue screen errors and even more recently my system hangs on the Motherboards splash screen on boot up. It sometimes takes 2 or 3 reboots to get it to boot up windows. I've defragged and error checked my drive. I've run memory tests on the ram. No problems in both instances so I remembered this video card thing. However, this doubled up card problem has been here for a few months, the IRQ blue screen error and splash screen freeze are much more recent. I'm just at a loss as to what else may be causing these problems unless the MB itself is bad. Thanks for your quick reply.

I decided to run the memory test again and this time, I failed a couple of tests right off the bat. Burst was one, I can't remember the other. Tried the ram in a different slot, same results. The million dollar question I have is: Does this necessarily mean the memory is bad or could it even be the ram slot on the board? Its one 512Meg chip and I don't have another to test my theory BTW.

To answer the original question, it's because most "newer" cards these days have two outputs. One is a standard monitor connector and the other is specifically for digital monitors such as flat screen, although you usually get a converter with the card. As a result, you get two devices appear in the Device Manager.