How do I get WinXP to use my 2nd video card?

[BigToque]

I've got a 2nd monitor and an S3 Trio 64 video card and I'd like to get it working under WinXP.

The card works, as I've just pulled it out of an old system and I know it works in my current system (it shows during POST), but when I get into Windows, XP detects the card, and has installed the driver but I get a yellow exclamation point and it says the

"This device cannot start. (Code 10)."

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Nebben]

Unfortunately that card cannot operate as the second device. What's your primary video card?

Try going into BIOS and changing the video device boot order, or something like that. It's probably set to AGP first, PCI second; you want to change it around. (This is assuming you have an AGP card). Then your AGP card will be bumped to the secondary adapter, which will allow your picky old PCI card to access the video first, and it should hopefully work. You can then change the primary adapter within WindowsXP to your AGP card, as XP can set them independendly from your BIOS.

If you have two PCI video cards, on the other hand, you could try reseating them in your PCI slots. You want the S3 Trio 64 in your very first slot, or at least before the main video card. It should work this way, hopefully.

Also, check out these forums for multiple monitor information. There's a lot of very good information on this site:

http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/forum/topics.asp?forum=1&tmpl=


If you happen to have an old Matrox Mystique PCI card, either 2 or 4mb, they are one of the few older cards that can work as secondary adapters. I am using two of them to power my 2nd and 3rd monitors right now. The color mode in the 2mb cards can only hit 16-bit at 1024x768, though... so they're not the best. But for $10 they are quite good. Available at Matrox's website for very little money.

http://shopmatrox.com/usa/products/categories.asp?CategoryID=26&Column=2

 

[nocash]

set to init pci first in bios and the s3 card will work, had same problem. then set agp to primary in windows

 

[Nebben]

... which is exactly what I just said.

 

[BigToque]

Thanks for the help guys, I got it working after doing what you guys said.

 

[imported_Phil]

Bear in mind that this may cause problems with games if the older card is set to primary. ie. extremely slow 3D.

 

[Nebben]

As long as you change your real 'primary' card to the primary within Windows, there should be no problem.