[Resolved] Display driver settings and Reboots

[arty62]

When will I learn to let well enough alone??? While solving another minor prob the mod suggested that I update video drivers and motherboard drvs as well....today I downloaded updated drivers for my 3d Prophet II MX dual display vid card...problems now are:

1)No msdos....screen is black, no cursor or anything else.

2)frequent lockups---various sites and random

3)Startup problems accessing the registry.

I will gladly go back to previous drivers if I knew how....can anyone help with this?.....rt

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Arty it sounds like problems 2 and 3 are just continuations of the previous issues.

For number one, try this: do a Find Files for dosstart.bat and rename it dosstart.old

Then try and restart in MS-DOS mode. You should get a cursor at the c:\windows prompt. To restart windows you will need to enter win, exit or just ctrl-alt-del

If this makes a difference, you can leave it that way or edit dosstart.bat (now dosstart.old). Open it in Notepad and copy/paste the contents here for a look see.

To test whether the other two problems are indeed video driver related, try going to System Properties > Perfomance > Graphics and reducing the hardware acceleration to None. Yes things will scroll slower than molasses, but if you don't have any freezing problems keep bumping it up and see when they begin. If you do have freezing problems at None or basic, then it's not Video related.

 

[arty62]

Hi Rollin'Rog....dont think continuation as things were pretty ok before I installed new drivers......always confuses me because of machine asking for disk, etc....were some files that machine claimed it couldnt find...may be at root of problem....also I get confused whether to get drivers from Hercules, or nvidia...anyway, I'll try the "old" trick and get back asap....

PS>>>already turned acceleration down as I couldnt even post here before I did....

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Where did you get the drivers from and what did you install?

Can you run dxdiag and see what it says for Device and Driver version? Then run the tests and see if it reports any errors.

By the way, you'll need hardware acceleration enabled to fully test with Dxdiag

 

[arty62]

Rog...renaming "old" made no difference.....I ran dxdiag earlier, got errors...will go back and get notes now...

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Did you get your drivers here?

http://us.hercules.com/support/link_drivers.php3?prodid=4&c=0&p=23

If all else fails, you can do a "clean" install of the drivers by carefully following the instructions here:

http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/forte/videocrd.html

 

[arty62]

DXdiag file attached rog....wouldnt copy/paste or i dont no how!!

 

[Rollin' Rog]

It looks like the installation from the Hercules site above should be a self-installing one. I wouldn't expect any prompts for disks when followiing their directions. You might want to try it again if you didn't use their installation media

 

[arty62]

That is where I got it...thought I followed directions....will redo....

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Sometimes it helps to install new drivers from Safe Mode. You can run the setup file from there.

 

[arty62]

Reinstalled...no joy.....will try the clean install method if you see no other solutions at this point.....i still have the dl executible on desktop....should I try safemode install?

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Have you been online the whole time of the installation? One thing to try as I just added above, is to try the install from Safe Mode. You want as few possible conflicts as possible.

 

[arty62]

Rog....tried safemode....went well until "unable to load NVidia files" came up.....install ended........anyway, still no joy with msdos .....after I rem the mouse line this AM I was able to access dos several time today with no prob at all...so I'm convinced present prob connected to vid drvr.....

BTW...I do have a backup registry made on Jan 18 before these probs started...

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Do you mean remming the mouse line in dosstart.bat? If you renamed the file, it shouldn't be loading any mouse drivers, although a dosstart.bat file will be recreated it shouldn't contain much of anything, except perhaps a sound driver reference, and you might want to rem that

I don't know what the effect of going back to an older registry will be at this point. One of the things that "clean install" link gives is precise instructions on deleting all video driver references from the registry to start fresh.

Another approach to solving restart in ms-dos problems is to do a File search for exitto which gets you to the Exit To Dos.pif

Then you right click on that, select Properties > Program > Advanced and check "specify a new ms-dos configuration"

 

[arty62]

I did the REM early yesterday am (sun) in the dosstart.bat not after we renamed it....

Will do the clean install this am )need some rest)....

in the exitto is there "a new msdos configuration' to make or does windows do it?

Thanks for help tonight Rog...hopefully will see you tomorrow with SOLVED up front!!......rt