Video Card Driver Issue

[United]

A friend of mine posted this message on another board and I was wondering if any of you all had a clue as to what his issue may be.

ok -

1/ i have a 7600gs - AGPx8 - 256 meg

2/ i moved it to a new motherboard

3/ everything was working perfect - under all driver releases

4/ then i installed yet another driver version - i must have re-installed the drivers 20 times = all diff ones

5/ now NO drivers will install - i've uninstalled the card - taken it out - you name it - i've tried it - almost

6/ the card is working as im using it now with generic winXP sp2 allocated drivers - BUT I CANT PLAY 'UT' or Quake 4' - arghhhhhhhhhhh !!

7/ i used another clean HDD to boot from & same problem

8/ 'Everest' & all diagnostic progs show the card to present & report back all the mem features etc - in other words it APPEARS no physical damage

any ideas ? i

Another person there asked him this question:

when you uninstalled it did u just uninstall the nvidia stuff or did you go into device manager and install the card?


how come youve used so many different drivers? why not just go to nvidia.com and get the latest? they should work fine

if you have another video card (anything that will work) try fitting it and rebooting the machine a couple times then reinstalling the nvidia.

did u get any error messages when trying to reinstall the drivers?

The original guy responded with:

i uninstalled both

i was tring diff drivers cuz the 3mark03 score was too low in comparison to similar systems - im not a gamer but i do like the odd shoot em up now & then & i keep an eye on specs nowadays

+ the card CD drivers which give an overclocking tab are WAY older than the latest forceware drivers

no error messages

try diff card - ok - i'll do that - i have an OLD ADP vid card i will try now

[38ruk]

download drivercleaner and install it ,Uninstall all nvidia drivers in  add/remove programs panel  , reboot pc into safe mode (F8 key) run drivercleaner for nvidia, reboot regularly and reinstall drivers. GL

[Krusty]

He's probably got some junk on there from installing too many drivers. He probably left a little nasty bit somewhere that's screwing him over.

First of all, he should know that 3D mark scores are not the main reason to choose 3D drivers. He SHOULD be using 84.66. These are the most compatible. I know because I have a 7600GTS (GS factory clocked at GT speeds). More recent versions have little bugs and display issues that are not present with 84.66. My install CD-ROM came with this version and it seems (for now) to be the best for this card.


Here is where he can download 84.66

However, BEFORE he does that, he needs to clean out the old junk (and there is some, somewhere, that's preventing the new drivers from installing).

I've been careful and never run into this problem, but from what I hear, you need to use either

nVidia Nasty File Remover

or

Detonator R.I.P..

Heck, you might have to use both, I don't know for sure (I'm sure others can fill you in).

Also, if he's been monkeying with his drivers so much he can't re-install nVidia drivers, have him run dxdiag and see if it even loads. If it does then he can just worry about drivers. If it returns an error, then he needs to reinstall DirectX as well.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by 38ruk
download drivercleaner and install it ,Uninstall all nvidia drivers in  add/remove programs panel  , reboot pc into safe mode (F8 key) run drivercleaner for nvidia, reboot regularly and reinstall drivers. GL

If you're looking for it, here is one possible download location

[eagl]

There's a utility called "CCleaner" that fixed a whole bunch of minor driver irritants out of my system.  It's a complicated little program that has a lot of potential to hose your system, but if you just run it and click ok a few times using their defaults, it should clear a lot of cruft out of the registry.

I have to run this every time I mess with my soundblaster audigy2 drivers because they do not install/uninstall/upgrade cleanly.