Unable to Install New Nvidia 8800GT Drivers

[LeetGoose]

Specs:

Windows XP SP3
8800GT


Today I purchased Mass Effect 2 but when I tried to play it I was getting some black bars across the screen and everything was very slow. I haven't updated my drivers in a while so I thought that was the issue. As I was updating to 195.21 I made the mistake of using Driver Cleaner Pro while not in safe mode and then installing the drives while in safe mode (got the process mixed up). After I removed all remnants of drivers and tried to reinstall but when I did I got the error message "The NVIDIA Control Panel could not be installed which may affect driver functionality. The most recent driver that worked will now be restored."
I then decided I would try and install 195.62 hoping they would work but I got the error message "The NVIDIA setup program could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware. Setup will not exit." I dont understand this because I thought 195.62 are supposed to be drivers? On a third attempt I tried to install 181.22 which ended up working but brings up the issue with Mass Effect 2 running poorly.

I tried doing a system restore but it did not work for some reason, I tried again on 2 different restore points and neither worked.

 

[LeetGoose]

I managed to do a system restore in safe mode but it didnt fix the issue. Although I did manage to update my drivers but the newest I could get them to was 191.07 from October. I am still unable to install 195.62 or 196.21

 

[ubernoobie]

Is your card still under warranty, if it is, rma it and say unable to install new drivers and they should give you a 9800gt back if you got a good company eg:bfg,evga,xfx

 

[Mousemonkey]

@OP, have you tried going into the system32 folder and deleting all nvidia files? And if you are really adventurous you could also use regedit to delete all nvidia entries then reinstall the latest drivers.