Reply 10260 of 27580, by ultra_code
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- Oldbie
wrote:Okay, so today I went ahead and followed this plan of attack. However, I was superficially bothered by the fact that "6800 GS" w […]
wrote:Ouch. Right-click on My Computer, click on Properties, Device Manager tab, expand the Display adapters section, right-click on the driver that says Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA), click on Properties, click on the Drivers tab, click on Update driver, click next, click on Display a list of all drivers in a specific location, so you can select a driver you want, click next, click on Have Disk, click Browse (why it goes to the floppy drive is beyond me), click on the list of drives and select Drive C or another drive that has the drivers, expand nVidia, Win9x or Win9xME, open the appropriate driver revision (81.98 causes windows protection errors and won't shut down), such as 77.72, make sure the inf file is selected, click OK, click OK, select the video card (6800 GS if listed), click next, click Yes (it always asks me to click yes when I re-install my GeForce 6200 video drivers), click next (the drivers will copy over to the appropriate destinations), click Finish, and click Yes to restart Windows.
Last night, I figured out my video card resolution issues by switching the VooDoo2 card and GeForce 6200 PCI card around, installed driver set 77.72, and I now get 1280x1024 resolution on my 18.1" NEC MultiSync 1850e monitor.
Okay, so today I went ahead and followed this plan of attack. However, I was superficially bothered by the fact that "6800 GS" wasn't an option through the "have disk" method, so what I did was go into XP, install the driver for that OS, copied all of the lines in the .inf file that mentions "6800 GS', went back into Win98, edited that OS's .inf file with those same lines reworded to match the same style of that .inf, and boom!, Win98 automatically said that the "6800 GS" was the best option to select. Now that's thinking. 😀
However, sadly, all good things must eventually come to an end. After installing the driver under Win98, I noticed while playing some games that some random-colored pixels would show up from time to time, and once there was a weird sound glitch in Hot Wheels: World Race (although this problem only persisted for one boot). After play-testing Win98, I went under XP, and tried testing out Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Driver (please don't criticize my game choices; these were my childhood games, and good ones 😀 ). I noticed that the game was really sluggish, and there were framerate problems. At this point, things went down-hill fast. Win98 became very sluggish, and XP somewhat unstable (it probably didn't help that after I installed the Nvidia driver for this card, the OS suddenly became "deactivated", and I am currently unable to reactivate the damn OS, because the online connection method didn't work, and nor did the phone method - after typing in the long reactivation code, the website was then redirected to basically a blank page :\ - hopefully it's just a Sunday thing, not a Microsoft-finally-giving-up-on-XP thing).
So, I decided to uninstall the drivers for both OSes and pull the card. I think there is something that is wrong with the card that the seller didn't catch. Unless someone can tell me otherwise, I think I'm going to refund this card. Twice I have been disappointed by the 6800s I have bought off of ebay. I'm now looking at a 6600GT to replace this disappointment of a 6800GS, since they are easier to find and/or are cheaper on average than any 6800, and they have actual "official" driver support for Win98, unlike the flaky support for the 6800GS.
Also, question: Does any one know of any good display driver removers for Windows 98 and XP? I have now put three GPUs through this P4 system of mine - 2 Nvidia GPUs and one ATI - so I feel that such a cleaning is necessary at this point.
So, I just contacted Microsoft support, and was able to get in contact with a human representative, and asked him what is the current status of Microsoft's self-reactivation services for XP, and it turns out that Microsoft just recently killed that whole avenue of reactivation, so now the only way to reactivate Windows is to reinstall the OS. AYFKM!
*sigh* Welp, I have my work cut-out for me, since this machine dual-boots Win98SE and XP. It would be easier to reinstall both OSes than to just try to reinstall XP. Besides, I'd rather have a working 6000 series Nvidia GPU ready and installed in the system before I reinstall XP, so this sh*t doesn't happen again.
A warning for all.
