The mother of all problems

[Wiz]

ok, here's the deal. I bought a viper 770, i heard all the horror stories about how it completely (insert fav curse here) up systems. I installed it, turned it on, and got the dreaded dobule beep at POST... ok, i looked some things up and found out my BIOS was out of date. I updated the bios and tried it again, lo and behold, it booted and loaded windows. This is where all hell breaks loose. First thing that happened was that the drivers that were supplied with the card were corrupted. This screwed over my displays. I called Diamond, they said take the card back, that it was bad, but i decided wait til the next day. In the the mean while, i rebooted my comp with the old video card, and got an interesting error after the POST. "Error, Windows cannot load, CONFIGNM corrupted, please reboot." I did, happened again, rebooted again, same error. This went on for about 10 min, cuz i didn't want to think about the possiblilites. I finally accepted the fact that windows was fried, so i reinstalled it. while it was installing i figured i'd have time to copy the ENTIRE dictionary by hand. Just as i finished the entry, Zygote, windows was done. I loaded it, set up the drivers, everything was hunky doory. I left and shut down my system. Came back about an hour later and booted, and i got the system setup again, and all the configurations i had made were deleted for the news ones. This is stilling going on, and i would dearly appreciate some help on how to fix it. Oh, how i wish linux was supported by more software and hardware.

[Target]

Wiz....again, this goes back to properly installing or removing the TNT2 drivers before you put another vid card in, or installing other TNT drivers (this is related to the other post you have about this card that I answered). The instructions for removal of the TNT2 drivers are on most mfg web sites and on the Nvidia site as well. Follow them to completely remove the old drivers and utils, and to install a different video card. You must follow their install and de-install instructions or you will run into issues.

For your convenience, those instructions are as follows:

To "PREPARE" for installation of the drivers

1 Start Microsoft Windows 98.

2 Click the Start button, point to Settings, and click Control Panel.

3 Double-click Display, and click the Settings tab.

4 Click Adapter, click the Change tab, click Next.

5 Select the option to display a list of drivers, then click Next.

6 Select Show all Hardware button, then select the Standard display types from the Manufactures list.

7 Select Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) from the list, then select Next.

8 Click Next to install the driver, click Finish, then select Apply to complete the installation.

To actually "INSTALL" the drivers

1 Click the Start button, point to Settings, and click Control Panel.

2 Double-click Display, and click the Settings tab.

3 Click Advanced Properties, click the Adaptor tab, then click Change.

4 Insert the NVIDIA Compatible Display Driver Disk 1 into the 3.5" diskette drive.

5 Click Next, click Next, then Click Next.

5a Select or type the path to the 3.5" diskette driver, then click OK.

Windows should find files for your NVIDIA graphics chip. If Windows cannot find the files, check that the path name for the diskette is correct and that the correct diskette is inserted in it.

6 If Windows found the files, click Next.

Windows copies the files to the hard disk.

7 Insert the NVIDIA Compatible Display Driver Disk 2, and click OK when Windows asks for the NVIDIA Compatible Display Driver Disk 2.

8 Click Finish to complete the installation.

9 Remove diskettes from the diskette drive, then click Yes when Windows asks if you wish to restart the computer.


Uninstall instructions
----------------------

To uninstall the drivers

1 Click the Start button, point to Settings, and click Control Panel.

2 Double-click Add/Remove Programs, select NVIDIA Display Properties Extension, then click Add/Remove.

[BC]

also next time I can't help this time cause it is over. But next time rename the system.dat & user.dat file to a backup extension. i.e. system.ba user.ba
And then rename the system.da0 & user.da0 to system.dat & user.dat
But you have to do these in dos.
Oh and I almost forgot..... you have to change the attributes to these files c:>attrib -r

[Wiz]

Target, i did uninstall all of the old drivers for my old video cards. I have installed enough video boards to know that. And i did call both Diamond and Comcast, both said it was the cards fault, not my own

[Comtech]

Instead of all the BS renaming the dat files, just boot to a DOS prompt, and type scanreg /fix
that will load a previous version of the reg that has no errors.

[Target]

Hey Wiz...just trying to help out buddy. Was not questioning your skillz, but its hard to know who is on the other end when you post something. Anyway, did you make sure you de-installed the associated software and utils that installed when the drivers did? If not, check in the add/remove programs and see if anything is still there that also needs to be removed.

[Wiz]

no, its my fault, i'm a bit on edge. just a follow up, i took back the TNT2 and had the store test it, and there was a problem with it, for some reason, some of the wires wereending prematurely. i decided to get a voodoo3 3000 instead, no problem with this one. I almost burned myself installing another heat sink on it, that thing is hot!