I've been using XP for months now, even though I've had Vista installed on my system previously. Now I installed Vista again, and manually downloaded SP1 and newest drivers (175.19) for my 8800 GTS. After boot the windows shows for like 10 sec, and then the screen goes black. Apparently the monitor aint getting a signal. Safe mode works, and I've uninstalled the drivers there. I've also tried multiple different driver versions, but the only one working seems to be the 169.06, which Windows Update gives for me. I've seen multiple posts around about this, but didnt found one working solution. I had nothing like this in XP or Vista before SP1. But then again, that was months ago, so the problem may also be with the new drivers.
Seems to be a somewhat common issue lately, see: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=33671&st=0 Few solutions there, may or may not work. The only workaround that has worked so far for me is to connect a display through the s-video output on the card, then swap back to DVI through the nvidia cp.
Thx for the tip, althou i didnt do actually that. I disconnected my display, connected my tv trough s-video and took it off. Then i re-connected my display again, and it worked.