Celestia Forums

I just got a MSI GF Ti 4400 today and I think I may have the wrong drivers....If someone could possibly tell me the exact way they installed thier card...if they have one like mine...maybe we can compare notes...Right now the only way I can get my computer to finish starting up windows is to reinstall my old card...the new card refuses to skip autodetection so Im in a catch 22....

I am under Windows 98 SE garbage with an Intel P4...

Im giving this 3 days then Im selling the whole thing for 100...the whole computer...Ive had it...I will wait till I can afford a mac...or Amigas come back...

~Rassilon

I don't own a GF myself, but all Nvidia cards install pretty much the same way.

First - Is your motherboard's AGP slot correctly rated for the new card? Not all AGP slots are the same. For example, my Athlon 600's mobo came with an AGP 2x slot, which wouldn't work with the new GF4 cards that need a 4x AGP. This is a show stopper. If your mobo isn't rated properly, you should return the card immediatly for a lesser card ( or your money back ).

Next - Put your old card back into your computer and boot into windows. It doesn't have to be configured correctly, as long as you can get on the internet. Go to http://www.nvidia.com and download the newest Detonator drivers. I always get the newest video drivers off the web because some cards ship with drivers that don't work at all!

Next - Reboot your computer into safe mode. Do this by rebooting, and a few seconds before the Windows98 logo comes up, start mashing the F8 key constantly. It should open up a black and grey text menu with several options, one of which is called 'Safe Mode'. Cursor down to it and press enter.

Next - When in safe mode, open 'My Computer', browse to 'C:', browse to 'Windows', and then browse to 'Inf'. This folder is hidden on some computers, so if you can't find it you'll need to tell windows to show you hidden files:

Do this by going to the 'View' drop-down menu, then select 'Folder Options', then select the 'View' tab. Under 'Advanced Settings:' you'll see a section 'Hidden Files'. Click the option for 'Show all files' and then click Ok. You should now be able to find the 'Inf' directory.

Once inside 'Inf', find a file called 'Dxnvidia.inf' and if it's there, delete it. Now close 'My Computer'.

Next - Right click on 'My Computer' and select 'Properties'. Now click on the tab 'Device Manager' and look for the heading called 'Display adapters'. Double click this. You may have several things listed under it, or only one. Whatever is in it, right click on each one, and select 'Remove'. Once you clear them all out, click 'Ok'. Make sure your driver CD that came with the card is NOT in your CDROM.

Now shutdown the computer and install the new card. This time when you reboot, it should tell you that it found a new device. At this point, you do NOT want windows to know that you have an NVidia! By just clicking 'Next' a couple of times it should automatically detect a PCI VGA Adapter. This is what we want. Let it install the driver and reboot.

Now, FINALLY!, when it reboots this time, you can run the driver executable that you downloaded from NVidia. It will install the drivers, and will probably have to reboot a time or two. Everything should be working at this point.

If it STILL won't boot up after all this, and you're SURE that your motherboard supports the correct AGP speed, then you have an IRQ conflict. This means that your new card and something else in your computer are not playing nice with each other. These are a pain in the ass to diagnose and fix, and in some cases I was never able to get two cards working together. Your best bet at this point would be to take the PC to a local computer shop that does PC repair, because it can literally drive you nuts trying to fix it.

Whew. As you can probably tell, I've installed a few NVidia cards. ( I used to run a local PC shop. ) If you follow the above sequence, and the planets are aligned , it should work every time.

Be sure to let me know how it goes. Good luck!

To reiterate: make sure you have the latest drivers! Some of the cards ship with some very old drivers . . . The latest nVIDIA drivers are version 30.82. I use this version (albeit with WinXP) and have no problems running Celestia.

What motherboard do you have?

--Chris

If you were running the newest drivers you wouldn't even half to reinstall them. Windows should have detected the card as an NVidia right off the bat and loaded the old drivers and you should be up and running. Have you tried getting into windows in safe mode. If you can get in with safe mode with your new video card then head to control panel and go to add remove programs and look for the previous install of the video drivers. Uninstall them and then reboot. Windows should then do an auto detection and the you can install the new drivers. Of course there is always the posibility that the card is bad. I personaly have not had the greatest luck with MSI video cards. From what I have seen of them they are cutting corners on there cards when it comes to cooling. I just bought a PNY Verto Ti 4200 64mb and its got an excelent cooling system. The new stock NiVidia cooler plus heatsinks on the memory. From what I have seen of the MSI parts they are not installing heatsinks on the memory. Bad idea as far as I am conserned. You might give all these ideas a shot. There is one more posibility. I had a problem with a motherboard not letting the video cards pull enough curent to run properly. The system would crash as soon as any 3D was activated. I changed my power supply to a 300watt but it didn't help. I then swaped out ht emotherboard and bingo that was it. You could be running into a similar problem. Selling off your sysetem isn't going to help you out. Do you have like $2000 laying around to go by a new Mac. I can't believe there prices keep going up and there not getting really any faster. Keep your system and just try a few more things. You may consider installing WindowsXP. You would love it compared to Wim9x. It not Mac OS X but its the best thing for the PC platform at this time. I know it can be expensive but if you get creative there are places you can get it for free. I am not condoning this activity but hey its out there if you look. Good luck and keep us posted.

Ok thanks a bunch all of you have been great I figured it out that night...It was simple...but confusing at first! Whoever thought that canceling out of autodetection would not work...and stay in an infinate loop...well not infinate really...had to click on skip file 20+ times until it finally gave up...I should know by now that windows Plug & Play only works for cards 100% compatible with it...and what is the chances of this?

The safe mode is a great idea...Next time I reinstall windows I'll remember that one Also theres disabling autodetection in MSCONFIG...Think that will be my first choice on my next hardware install...

And the motherboard is the latest P4B ASUS with a 4x AGP slot...so I was sure it was compatible...just a pain....

I still want Amigas back though...But I guess I can only hope

Bah, why Amiga when you can go all the way back to the 64?

Seriously, glad to hear that you got it going.