8500GT Works When Monitor Turned OFF

CRT 21/750 Formac (SonyGDM) / point of view 8500GT / Windows 7-64

xfx 680i LT / 4 gB ram / Q6600 / latest XFX BIOS

(My first PCIExpress card - be gentle ;-) Here's what I've been doing

for what seems like the best part of two days -

1 Boot in safe mode, disable 8500. Reboot.
2 Drivesweeper'd nVidia display drivers in safe mode. Reboot.
3 Restart in safe mode to verify drivers gone, but 7 just goes ahead

and renistalls 195.62 anyway (A moderator on the nVidia boards says

that these latest drivers should NOT be installed in safe mode.) & asks

for a reboot.

4 Reboot as instructed, then screen blanks after entering password;

pretty much what I've gotten from day 1.

> Now, just today I tried something I saw somewhere here (?) where

A I reboot the PC (after 1,2,3 above) with my monitor OFF
B Enter my password 'blind'
C I finally get to a proper desktop which appears to be using the

correct drivers (Refresh rate looks much better) but I can't verify

graphics card changes, as this causes a blank screen again.

Monitor is the only device plugged into the GF card.

Where have I screwed up?