Bill's Workshop -- Unoffical 3Dfx Banshee Troubleshooting and Game Guide

Warning: Diamond 2.11 Drivers can cause fatal error in Explorer under certain circumstances

Update 01/12/99: You can read the entire account below if you like horror stories. It is almost certain that the source of the problem is a conflict between a file in Diamond's InControl Tools and Internet Explorer 5 (beta). If you are running IE4, do not expect problems. I have had many reports confirming that IE5 is the common denominator. One alternative is to install the Diamond drivers without InControl Tools - there is an option to do this. The other is to use 3Dfx reference drivers.

This is an account of my experience with Diamond drivers 2.11. Let me explain that I was experimenting by installing these drivers to a Creative Labs Banshee AGP card, something that no one should ever do. This was purely to determine what could happen. I have always advised never to use drivers cross-vendor except in the rare instance where it is absolutely clear that the drivers are just generic reference drivers. However, clean reference drivers are now available from 3Dfx.

I have already mentioned in the News that I did have "a problem" but did not post the details other than a general warning. I post this now because it appears that others are having a similar problem, perhaps even when the drivers are installed appropriately to a Diamond Monster Fusion. This is not intended to be expert advice on how the problem should be resolved, but one person's attempt to do so described in as much detail as I can remember for the purpose of helping to get to the bottom of the issue.

I encourage readers, particularly ones with expertise in troubleshooting Windows Explorer errors or those with more specific knowledge of this particular event, to email me their comments.

Although this looks like a typical step-by-step troubleshooting guide, it is primarily my account annotated with information I have found helpful. If I can get a very clear bead on the problem and solution from reader comments, I will develop a more formal guide item.

Special Note: I am running Win98 SR1 beta. This includes IE5.

Sprecial Note: Reader Bill Honig steered me to this Microsoft Knowledgebase article that points to a particular corrupt file and provides a fairly easy fix that worked for him. Thanks Bill. I will try it when I feel like a being a guinea pig again.

Problem/Symptoms: I installed the newest Diamond 2.11 drivers and when I rebooted my system crashed upon entering the desktop with an error message "Explorer has caused a fatal error in Explorer.exe" (paraphrase - I can't remember the exact error message) just after the desktop background appeared and the Windows startup sound finished playing. When I closed this dialogue box, the desktop icons and taskbar did not appear, and although the mouse worked I could do nothing. Booting to Safe Mode resulted in the same error condition.

During a subsequent Windows reinstallation I had a complete lockup during hardware detection. I rebooted around that and then in the last stages, setup locked up while creating the desktop. Cntrl-Alt-Del revealed grpconv.exe not responding. This is the program than prepares the Windows menu folders and items (shell links).

Cause: The cause is far from clear. In my case, I was running IE5, which I think was a factor. I am guessing that there is an incompatibility between InControl Tools and IE5 and I will be testing that. I believe the root cause is corruption of the start Menu during the process of integrating InControl Tools into the StartUp, although this is mostly conjecture. I did find corruption of some StartMenu items, which when removed resolved the problem.

Solution: The best solution is not clear, but I was able to avoid a clean reinstall Windows. You may try the following:

Boot to command prompt and enter c:\scanreg /restore. This will restore the registry from a previous copy. This did not resolve the problem for me. Further information on scanreg /restore is available here.
Reinstall Windows over the existing installation into the same folder using the following switches. Try it. Windows reinstall locked up for me and required the reset button, and I eventually finished the reinstallation.
Setup /p f;/nd - these switches

/nd - This switch ignores the presence of a Migration.dll file and is used to force Windows 98 to overwrite newer files. NOTE: Files that use the ",,,32" flag in the .inf file still force Windows 98 Setup to keep the newer files.

/p f; - This switch enables Clean Registry mode. It forces Detection to clean the root branch of the registry before starting. This switch is ignored when Setup is run in the Windows 95/98 graphical user interface (GUI). The default is disabled.

Windows Setup switches are described in more detail here.
I had to step over installation lockups with Cntrl-Alt-Del and reset button hits. Once when the system locked Cntrl-Alt-Del popped up a task list that showed grpcon.exe not responding. I did not do anything specific at that point other than continue to reboot. Here is a document with further information about this.

At one point in attempting to resolve this I did edit system.ini using edit.com from the command prompt, and changed the Windows shell line to:

shell=progman.exe

This allowed Windows to use Program Manager as a shell so as to examine the menu groups. I found nothing there. You can run other Windows system programs, such as regedit and msinfo32, should you wish to try other forms of system recovery.

If after Windows reinstallation you still have a system lock up when clicking on the Start menu button, boot into Safe Mode and right click on Start menu button, select Open and remove all Start menu items except Programs and Channels. This was the key step for me to get back to the desktop. I had several custom menu items on the Start menu button that apparently had become corrupt. Also, removing items from the StartUp menu, especially if you see anything referring to Diamond InControl tools, would be worth while.
Uninstall Diamond drivers and InControl Tools. I can't be specific about the best way to do this under this circumstance since I did a lot of unconventional removal by deleting of Diamond files and registry entries from the command prompt line and using regedit in the Program Manager shell.

WARNING: I cannot be responsible for the effects that may result from attempting steps in the above Solution. If you have a minimal amount of software installed you should consider a fresh reinstallation of Windows, preferably by reformatting your hard drive or by installing into a different folder.

Feedback: I am most interested in feedback about Internet Explorer version, but anything that adds information would be appreciated.

Related Topics

Now, which driver should I use?

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