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satis
8-18-03, 03:52 AM
ok, it's my turn to ask a question. :) Anyway, I'm not sure if anyone can help me, but I can't find the answer online anywhere.

I have Windows XP professional... the stupid O/S is acting up on me, so I'm looking at having to reinstall it soon. That's fine. However, here lies my problem...

I have a Visiontek GeForce4 ti4600. When I try to install Windows with that card in, all's well and good until about 2-3 screens before when you enter the CD key. At that point I guess the video resolution changes or something, and the screen just gets really badly garbled.

I restarted the installation a couple times with the same effect. At the time I had a GeForce2 available to me, so I just pulled out the ti4600, slapped in the GeForce2, restarted the installation and all was well. Once Windows was fully installed, I would switch the cards out again and proceed on my merry way.

Unfortuanetly, now the 2 is in another machine, so this previous plan of attack really isn't very feasible. Besides, I'd like to correct the issue. I've spoken with some people I know, and a few have commented this is a 'known' issue and there's a BIOS update to fix it. Well, for the life of me I can't find anything, anywhere online even mentioning a similar problem. Nor dos Visiontek have ANY BIOS updates for my vidcard, nor does nVidia.

Anyone have any ideas? Just for the record, the garbling has only occurred to me on another computer... when I initially built and installed XP on this one, I just used the GeForce 2 so I wouldn't have to deal with the issue. It's possible it was something with the other computer, but before getting stuck with a dead system I figured I'd ask.

B&T
8-18-03, 09:40 AM
I don't know the answer to your question, but . . . I think when WIN installs in uses the standard vga driver before it does the hardware detect - which should therefore work with any card. Therefore, I would think you could run a test by changing the driver on your machine to the standard VGA driver. But then if there is a problem with running it, you may kill the machine then. Hey, worst case, you just have to pull the card from the other machine. Only a few extra minutes.

satis
8-18-03, 06:07 PM
yea... the part where it freezes up is in the text-mode part, prior to any reboots and any real windows... so no messing with drivers, I'm afraid. I figured I'd probably have to switch out video cards, I just wish I knew how to really fix it.

I think I may have a TNT2 M64 floating around somewhere... maybe I can dig that out. I don't like the idea of having 2 machines down at the same time.

Rick_E
8-26-03, 12:09 PM
The usual drill, which you've probably already done, is to

* Uninstall any software and/or drivers that came with the troublesome card

* In Device Manager, remove the troublesome card

* Shut down the computer, plug in a workable card, and restart.

* Download the latest drivers for the troublesome card and install them before plugging in the troublesome card. This ensures that Windows does not install its own drivers first.

* Shut down the computer, install the troublesome card, and restart. Windows should find and install the downloaded drivers. If it doesn't, go into Device Manager and "Update Drivers", browsing to your downloaded drivers.

VisionTek nVidia drivers may be found here...
http://www.visiontek.com/drivers.html