hardware message boards

**belovedmonster** · June 21st, 2003, 02:59 PM

im having some problems with my new graphics card so does anyone know of any decent computer message boards were ill get some decent help and not just "download the latest drivers"?

**belovedmonster** · June 21st, 2003, 11:11 PM

Ive recently upgrading my computer to Athlon XP 2200+ 1.8GHz, 512 MB DDR Ram but im having problems with my graphics card, a Inno3d Tornado GeForce4 MX. Basicly the screen sorta flickers if theres anything moving, like if i drag a box or scroll down a webpage. You can watch as it refreshes the frames sorta thing.

Everyone is telling me to adjust the refresh rate but when i go to the appropriate place it is greyed out! I think the problem might lie in the fact XP doesnt seem to of recognised i have a card connected becos it isnt listed in device manager.

Ive downloaded the latest drivers so pls dont suggest that. Im going out of my mind here!

**miker** · June 22nd, 2003, 03:35 AM

it's very rare to have problems with modern graphics cards, especially if you have the latest drivers ;-)

why don't you just do a google search on the problem you're having?

what is the problem you're having? there's quite a few technical peeps on this very board.

**miker** · June 22nd, 2003, 11:46 AM

not being listed in device manager kinda ***** and means i can't suggest you uninstall it and reboot.

so, try this instead -

boot into safe mode (press F8 before the XP loading screen shows up)

some times it can take an IMMENSE amount of time to get to a desktop in safe mode, but stay with it.

once in safe mode, take a peek at device manager, uninstall any related graphics devices.

reboot and let XP do it's hardware detection automagically ... this essentially gives you a clean slate to reinstall the vendors drivers, although XP should support GeForce chipsets out of the box.

also, instead of the vendors drivers you could try the reference drivers from nVidia.

of course, you may have tried all this before in which case it's time to get the latest ATI card ...

**belovedmonster** · June 22nd, 2003, 05:33 PM

i uninstalled the unknown thing and then restarted and it said new hardware... but looky...
http://www.geocities.com/spottyjim/devicemanager.html

Its not the graphics is it, its some USB thing.

So if the unknown thing isnt the graphics how can i make the graphics show up?

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 22, 2003 02:34 PM: Message edited by: belovedmonster ]</font>

**miker** · June 23rd, 2003, 02:35 PM

that's just frickin' weird!

there should be a Display Adapter in there, gah!

i wouldn't worry too much about the unknown USB thing yet, until you want to plug in a USB device. is it USB2.0 (480mbps) per chance?

are you stuck in 16 colour mode? if yes, then the drivers are definitely not installed properly and you are running in VGA compatibility mode.

in fact if you right click desktop -> properties -> advanced
do you see a driver tab? is it populated? what with?

another something which may give a clue if you start -> run
and type into the box-
dxdiag

wait for a bit and it will gather some info on the state of your directx settings, including tests. if you do the 2d/3d tests and they are abyssmally slow then you definitely have a problem - but then you already knew that!

it might be worth giving the nVidia reference drivers shot-
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
(these drivers should work with all GeForce cards, nVidia supply ALL the chipsets to third party vendors)

um, good luck!