"Unable to Initialize 3D Accelerator":( Plz help!!

[Andrew111]

80% of the time when I run 3DMark2001, I get the "Unable to initialize 3d Accelerator" error. It says something about D3D under that. Max Payne also crashes to desktop(no errors show up)when it starts loading a game or tuturial, and Giants crashes to desktop with no errors after I get in some action in the game. I suspect this is also caused by Direct3d since both games use it I think. My video card is a Leadtek Geforce3 Ti200, and I had problems with it right away when playing games. I'd get that infinite loop error and system lockups, and this was with the Leadtek provided drivers. Those drivers were horrendous(thank god you can use the NVIDIA reference drivers, so I switched to the NVIDIA reference drivers, the newest official ones at the time....the 21.83 reference drivers. This one was better, no more infinite loops BUT, I still got crash to desktops in games. I decided to try the beta 22.5 drivers, and I test 3dmark2001. I didn't get any errors, and I tested it twice. I was thinking I might have solved the problems with these drivers, but I still got the crash to desktop in games, I even lowered the hardware acceleration for the video card and I still get the problems. I tried the newly released 23.11 drivers and I get the errors in 3dmark2001 and crash to desktops in games still. The video card is sharing IRQs with my 56k modem, IEEE port, and three VIA USB something or other controllers....I have the Shuttle Kt266a m/b, and 756mb of registered ECC ram(friend gave me extra ram he had, even though the m/b doesn't support either. I ran Prime95 for several hours with no problems, so I'm pretty sure this is a video card driver problem, even though I have tried four different drivers so far with no luck The Leadtek drivers, 21.83, 22.5, and 23.11 drivers. Any help is GREATLY appreciated, I want to play games on my new system!!!

 

[Andrew111]

really need some help on this issue!

 

[narzy]

Try This Forum (Video)
or this one (Tech Support)

Wrong Forum pal...

as for your problem I have seen somthing similar, when I upgraded my vid card in my machine to a GF 3 Ti500 without deleting the Vid Drivers...try removing all files that start with nv4 and reinstall the 23.11 drivers...also this didn't fix my problem I had to reinstall the OS. however when you say new system I assume that you did not upgrade vid cards and start getting this error...people have been complaining about VIA - NVidia issus are you running on a VIA chipset?

 

[Andrew111]

I posted this in the Video forum yesterday but I didn't get many responses so I posted it here. I never used any other video card, just built the computer a few weeks ago. I was thinking of reformatting, but will that get me into any issues with Microsoft's anti-piracy stuff? I have it activated and registered. I did think about reformatting, I attempted it this morning......went to the repair windows thing and tried reformatting...but it tells me critical installation files are on the disk so I can't do it since I have just one big partition for my hard drive. I might grab another hard drive and do it, but I don't want to be locked out of Windows XP because I reformat. Thx for the help so far!

and yes..I do have a VIA motherboard....the Shuttle Kt266a. I did hear about a lot of people having issues with NVIDIA video cards and VIA motherboards in Windows XP and to a smaller extent in Windows 2000, I sure am glad I eliminated that infinite loop thing because I went to a forum where people were discussing this and several people were getting that error no matter what they did.

 

[imgod2u]

Issues with Via chipsets are definitely numerous. Many times, they're fixable. First, the reformatting thing. If you actually bought Windows XP, the only restriction is that you can use it on one machine at any given time. You can activate the product as many times as you want, but only one machine can run it at any one time. Secondly, if you want to reformat, go into setup and choose to install the OS anyway despite the fact that there's already an OS. Then, choose to format the partition. I'd suggest you get Partition Magic and partition your HD so you'll have a second partition to store and backup your files to. If you don't have it, burn it on a cd. If you don't have that........