Driver installation

[foamy]

Seems no matter how many times I try I can't get my computer to load up an older Video card driver ??

I have Nvidia GF4 4200 on Windows 2K. Current driver is 4.0.7.2 and I am trying to put in the recommended 30.82 driver because I have read on this forum that it more reliable. (With my current driver CMBO will occaisionally shut down while I am giving units way points.)

I download the 30.82 driver, unzip it and run it. All the file opening and updating things seem to go OK. Am I supposed to do something else such as remove the old driver first ??

[Shatter]

Originally posted by foamy:

Seems no matter how many times I try I can't get my computer to load up an older Video card driver ??

I have Nvidia GF4 4200 on Windows 2K. Current driver is 4.0.7.2 and I am trying to put in the recommended 30.82 driver because I have read on this forum that it more reliable. (With my current driver CMBO will occaisionally shut down while I am giving units way points.)

I download the 30.82 driver, unzip it and run it. All the file opening and updating things seem to

go OK. Am I supposed to do something else such as remove the old driver first ??

Holy crap I was just coming to the board for the exact same thing. I also must of tried at least 6 or 7 times with no luck. I also read the good thing about the 30.82 but they just won't work, I keep getting my current drivers installed after reboot.

Foamy I tried to remove the drivers I curently have then install 30.82, but after reboot for unistal of current drivers. It Pc detects new hardware and automatically installs original drivers instead of 30.82.

[ March 16, 2003, 06:54 PM: Message edited by: Shatter ]

[Schrullenhaft]

Go to Control Panels > Add/Remove Programs control panel > find a listing for the NVidia Detonators you have installed. Usually there should be a listing, but on occasion, depending on how you installed the previous set of drivers, there may be no listing. Run the uninstall, but don't reboot yet when it finishes.

To make sure that your previous drivers aren't reinstalled automatically, you need to remove the .INF file that tells Windows to install the drivers. This file is usually found in the WINDOWS/INF or WINNT/INF directory. It may start with NV*.INF (NVDISPLAY.INF ?) or possibly OEM*.INF. Delete this file and at least the 4x.xx driver won't be reinstalled automatically.

An additional step you can take is to actually delete the files that are used by the driver. Check for any NV*.* drivers in the WINDOWS/SYSTEM or WINNT/SYSTEM32 directory. There are a few other files that I can recall at the moment, but this should cover most of them. A simpler solution is to use one of the NVidia Cleaner programs that cleans up the registry (and possibly helps to delete the driver files).

When you've rebooted Windows should redetect the video card. Depending on which version of Windows you have (and which GeForce) you should select the 'Standard SVGA PCI adapter' (Windows XP may detect GeForce2 and earlier cards and install the 12.40 driver). You're going to be limited to 640x480 and 16 colors for the moment, but hopefully the registry settings get updated so that there aren't viable references to registry settings for 4x.xx drivers. You'll probably need to reboot the computer at this point.

If necessary (and it rarely should be) you can reinstall or upgrade your DirectX version. DirectX 9.0 is the latest version, but the 30.82/30.87 drivers don't need it. There no true advantages to upgrading to DirectX 9.0 right now, but it usually shouldn't be a problem to do it now if you're going to do it in the future.

Download and extract the NVidia Detonator version you want. For most (but not all) downloads there should be a setup program among the extracted files. Some downloads may only have a .INF based install which will require you to use the Add Hardware control panel. Before running the setup program I suggest turning off any anti-virus programs for the moment and also closing down any other programs or utilities running in the background. Run the NVidia setup program and the drivers should be installed (and uninstallable via the Add/Remove Programs control panel). A reboot will be required after this. The next time you go into the Display control panel to check out the version, it should indicate 30.82 or whatever version you installed.