What you're doing should work. Try a different GeForce AGP card. The one you are using might be half-dead.

Do you have more than 512MB of memory? It can cause this and if so, you'll need PATCHMEM.

STX wrote:

What you're doing should work. Try a different GeForce AGP card. The one you are using might be half-dead.

I don't have any other cards right now 😒 so is it the warning sign that my card is half dead now?

schmatzler wrote:

Do you have more than 512MB of memory? It can cause this and if so, you'll need PATCHMEM.

Nope I have 256MB of RAM

pote2639 wrote:

...so is it the warning sign that my card is half dead now?...

Maybe. Without access to nVidia's proprietary developer tools and a bus analyzer, consumers like us can't determine exactly what is the cause of the problem. So, we use the process of elimination. You've already tried a different driver version. The next easiest thing to try would be a different GPU. (There are many parts of a GPU that can fail over time: Electrolytic capacitors get old and dry out. Electromigration occurs within chips. BGA solder joints can crack.)

pote2639 wrote:

I don't have any other cards right now...

If you're in the USA, then you could acquire an AGP FX 5200 from a well-known online auction website for $9 right now.

Trying a different good motherboard with your FX 5500 would also help you to determine whether the GPU has a hardware failure or the problem exists elsewhere. If you don't have another motherboard available though, then buying another GPU for testing would be less expensive than buying another motherboard.

Other ideas:

• Run MemTest86 on your system. (Single-threaded mode is best.)
• Check the Windows Event Viewer for a critical error logged at the time when the system reset. Then, Google that error.

...Okay, for some reason I had to take out the RAM and put it again. out of curiosity I tried to install nvidia driver again, now it doesn't show Windows Protection Error... but stucking in Windows 98 splash screen! I don't know if it better or worse

Probably worse.

(Sorry, I forgot that you're not running Windows 2000 or XP. You cannot check the Windows Event Viewer; it doesn't exist in Windows 98.)

You should try MemTest86+. Burn this CD image to a CD-R and boot from it.

STX wrote:

Probably worse.

(Sorry, I forgot that you're not running Windows 2000 or XP. You cannot check the Windows Event Viewer; it doesn't exist in Windows 98.)

You should try MemTest86+. Burn this CD image to a CD-R and boot from it.

Forgot to tell you my retro PC's CD drive is broken and my modern PC doesn't have any CD / Floppy drive at all.

Maybe I'll try finding some old agp gpu to test it out when I have times

You could try the MemTest86+ bootable USB image. If you're lucky, your retro PC's motherboard might be able to boot from USB. If you try this, then back up the data on your USB drive that you don't want to lose.

STX wrote:

You could try the MemTest86+ bootable USB image. If you're lucky, your retro PC's motherboard might be able to boot from USB. If you try this, then back up the data on your USB drive that you don't want to lose.

I don't think it will boot on the USB, already tried that too. It seems my mobo is too old to do that. Well guess I'm sorta out of luck. But I'm pretty sure it's gpu problem anyways so probably replacing gpu would get this thing back to life again.

1. Can you get on the internet with your Windows 98 PC?
2. Do you have a working 3½" floppy drive?
3. Do you have a working 3½" floppy disk?

If the answer to all of these questions is Yes, then you can use the MemTest86+ floppy disk image.

It may very well be the via chipset. make sure you've installed the via agp driver and also try the agp 2x setting in bios (or turn agp turbo or something like that to ''off''). It will not lower the performance on that card but can increase stability by a lot.

Tried all of that, x1, x2, and x4. all freezing the same.

Also I don't have any floppy disk and any floppy drive on my modern PC to write it, so I'm dead end

Anyways f*** it and bought an AGP ATI 9600 Pro and Coppermine Pentium 3 1GHz from ebay, got 5 bucks off it so why not. now all I have to do is waiting for them. too frustrated with fx5500. Now I hope both upgrades will run smoothly on my small 250w power supply and it's not motherboard problem 🤣..

I just came here to add some info to this error (for other people).
MaxFileCache is the solution for some NVIDIA drivers with the protection error on startup. I tried different drivers for Geforce2Go.. Spend a lot of time... Just limit the maxfilecache with more than 512MB Ram.

Yes, this thread is old, but still important. Frankn Drivers works fine.

TomvB wrote on 2020-05-28, 19:43:

I just came here to add some info to this error (for other people).
MaxFileCache is the solution for some NVIDIA drivers with the protection error on startup. I tried different drivers for Geforce2Go.. Spend a lot of time... Just limit the maxfilecache with more than 512MB Ram.

Yes, this thread is old, but still important. Frankn Drivers works fine.

WoW WoW Thank you 1000 times ! I searched for hours about this same problem, and your solution is the only one who works ! I've got a FX 5200 which worked under Windows 98 since I used an old Pentium III with 384Mb SD-RAM. But then I changed the mother board and put a Pentium D 925 with 512Mb DDR2, and Windows would not load with any drivers, I tried a lot. I read nearly every single posts about this problem, until I found yours. So I decided to play with the RAM and I did semething crazy, I change from 512MB of RAM for 1Gb, and tada, it works better. At least it boots under windows, the drivers work for anything 2D, but there are still problems for the 3D ... I'm trying to sort it out.
So yes, there is a true relationship between the amount of RAM and the FX 5200 (AGP).
Thank you so much -_-

Edit : I made it work finally, 81.98 drivers don't work at all for me, 3D never works and give errors. I just changed for the 42.23 and everything seems to work now -_- Coming from a PIII@1.8Ghz to a Pentium D 925 is a huge frame rate boost !