GeForce and XP problem

[Errol]

I've had my computer for almost 2 years now and I've never had any serious problems until recently. I've got old Athlon based system running at 700 mhz, a Asus K7V mainboard, Creative GeForce DDR, 3Com Nic and SBLive. Two Harddrives, Master: Quantum Fireball Plus 13,6 gig (UDMA/66), Slave: IBM Deskstar 60 GXP 60 gig (UDMA/100), both connected to the standard UDMA/66 controler on the mainboard. The problem started when I bough a new harddrive, a Maxtor D740X 40 gig to replace my old Quantum. Everythin worked out fine and I started installing XP, after the installation I went on directly to Windows Update and downloaded every availble patch and drivers, including WHQL certified driver for Nvidia. After the installation I was promted to reboot and so I did and then, blank screen and a dead computer. I started up in Safe mode and rolled back the nvidia driver to the original XP driver, and then it worked. But nomather how I try, this freak computer won't work with any other display drivers than XP original. I've tried everything, updating the mainboard BIOS, I have the VIA service pack installed, I even changed back to my old Quantum drive but all efforts with the same result. Can someone please help me solve this amazingly strange problem?

 

[Mem]

<< But nomather how I try, this freak computer won't work with any other display drivers than XP original. I've tried everything, updating the mainboard BIOS, I have the VIA service pack installed, I even changed back to my old Quantum drive but all efforts with the same result. Can someone please help me solve this amazingly strange problem? >>




Welcome to Anandtech forums Errol,did you try downloading the Nvidia drivers from a different site and try manually installing them?

You can download the 23.12 drivers from
here

WinXP is not perfect when it comes to driver updates, it told me I had IBM keyboard (I do not) and when I let it install an Epson driver update from Microsoft update site my printer after stopped working and was throwing fits with the paper,I had to remove it and reinstall all the software from the Epson CD,so now I only let XP install critical updates etc but no driver updates from the Microsoft update site.

Best to do it yourself.

 

[Errol]

Hello Mem

I've tried all sorts of drivers, first of I used the WHQL drivers from Windows Update, then I'd tried the official 23.11 drivers from Nvidia. I also tried with an old Creative driver but none of them worked. Finally I gave up, I replaced the GeForce with my old Riva TNT and it worked. So right now I'm a bit confused, and I'm using the 23.11 Nvidia drivers. When I have the guts, I'll probably give it another shot, but right now I'm fed up with compueters.

 

[Mem]

Try removing your driver first and change to standard VGA, quick quide here ,you should always remove your old drivers first especially if you go from say Creative drivers to Nvidia reference drivers.