Video and Sound driver update queries?

[Apache]

Well I succumbed and put my son's Rome Total war on my CM secure PC. Result - disaster!!

I have an AMD Athlon 2100 running XP Home with an Nvidia GeForce Ti 4200 and a Creative Audigy Sound Card neither of which have had driver updates in last 3 years (deliberately!). When the game installed it also put Windows Media 9 onto the PC.

I now have two problems:

1) RTW needs Direct X 9.0b (which it installed)

2) The worst problem - all the FMV (intros, 'cover stories' and history etc) on RTW which my son needs run with poor quality intermittent sound (which cuts out mroe than it is in) and not too high a picture quality.

I am HOPING that an overhaul of drivers will sort all this out BUT may it be that parts of my config (e.g. sound and vid card) are not Direct X 9 compatible?

I am not sure whether Windows XP SP2 (which I also have not got yet) might also help? Again I've been avoiding that (and being on 56K I hope it is available on a disc!!!!).

I would particularly welcome any thoughts on drivers or indeed anything else that may be causing the FMV problems.

I cirrently have the 3.0.8.7 video driver installed. The Windows update site has this Nvidia driver listed as the latest being released on 6/10/03 but doesn't give the driver version. Is this the current and best and/or most stable? PLUS any CM issues with it?

I have now DL and installed Audio EAX 4DRV driver for the soundcard and am also going to install the later WEBUP PCW DRV as well. If those don't cure it I could well be stuffed?

Would sound card drivers affect video and vse versa too?

I'm not a regular driver updater and plan to do the changes by:

a) Uninstall current driver through device manager and reboot

let windows find what it needs on reboot then install new driver from exe file and reboot again

c) defrag after all the mess

Is that the correct approach.

And finally, anyyhing else at all that you might think is causing the FMV probs? Could it be Media 9? Is it likely to be any settings?

Any help VERY much appreciated. I HATE update time!!!!

[Redwolf]

Well, first it's DirectX 9, not Media 9.

A GeForce 4 is not a DirectX 9 card, but that doesn't mean you can't use it with DirectX 9, it only means some Direct3D hardware accelerated features won't be accelerated.

Don't rely on Windows update for drivers. What kind of joke is that that they offer drivers from the stone age? Go to nvidia.com and get the 61.77 drivers.

[Apache]

I know it's Direct X 9. It also loaded Media 9 (which looks like its CA shorthand for Media Player 9).

The 56.64 Nvidia driver install, despite my worst fears, has fixed problems.

Thanks anyway.