Yikes!
You've just swapped in a new high-powered video card and all you get is goofy
problems. Refresh rates might not be right, your mouse does weird things or none of
your 3D games work. What to do?
After you have done the easy stuff (reinstalled
drivers, checked BIOS settings, IRQ and resource assignments and conflicts) you are left
with only a few options, short of returning the card - it certainly may be defective.
- If you don't have a lot of software and want to do the least
technically demanding repair, a reformat of the hard drive and complete
reinstallation of the operating system and software will rid you of conflicting drivers
and registry entries. Some people seem to do this on a regular basis as a sort of
spring cleaning. For me, this would take at least 2 days with all the software I
have. Yuck.
- Look at the modified "clean"
reinstallation of Win98 that I have here. I have used this successfully
to fix seemingly impossible hardware messes. It requires a bit of care in renaming
folder and editing the registry, but it does work. I have had no problems with it,
but if you have installed DirectX6 and Internet Explorer5beta, those should be removed
first. After this, the reinstallation of Windows is a 20-30 minute task and all
software is left in tact. A wonderful timesaver compared to the previous option.
- Purging of all video card drivers and
reinstallation of the drivers for the current card only is the alternative I will discuss
here.
The Purge
The goal here is to find and delete
all previous video card drivers and registry keys. The driver part is
pretty straightforward, but the registry key removal scares the heck out of most newbies
and even tech support folks. Yes, you can hose your system, but Win98 has very
smooth disaster recovery and maintains multiple back up copies of the registry which it
will load automatically, if need be. With just a little watchfulness about what you
are deleting, you should be OK. Here we go.
- If the card has driver and display utility uninstallation
procedures, use them.
- Look in any Start menu program folders created by the driver
and display utility installation for an uninstall program and run that.
- Look at the Add/Remove Programs applet in
Control Panel for a driver and/or utility for any cards in the program list and uninstall
from there.
- Restart the computer and go into Safe Mode.
In Win98, you can hold down the Cntrl key during boot just after the BIOS post screen
finishes (before the Windows splash screen appears) and this will bring up a boot choice
menu from which you can pick Safe Mode.
- If you are using a USB mouse (like me), it will NOT work in
Safe Mode, so temporarily attach a P/S2 mouse (remember to remove it after finishing Safe
Mode work).
- Once in Safe Mode. Get to the System applet Device
Manager by right clicking on My Computer and selecting Properties, then Device Manager
tab.
- Open up the Display adapter listing. You may see
multiple device listings, some for old devices. Remove them. This may clear
out a lot of the registry items and simplify your search later on. If the 2D for you
current card basically works, I would leave this alone for now as it will allow you to
edit inside Win95/8 with a bigger desktop than the default windows mode after everything
is cleaned out.
- Reboot in normal Win95/8 desktop.
- Navigate with My Computer or Explorer to the C:\Windows\Inf\Other
folder. Look for INF files for you video cards. They should have somewhat
descriptive name which should help you. For instance the 3dfx Voodoo2 INF file is
named 3Dfx Interactive, Inc.VOODOO2.INF. You can open and read IF
files with Notepad, as shown below. It is a plain text file,
although the information may look like geek gibberish. However, you will find a list
of driver files and registry keys.
- Print this file out and any others that look like video
cards. If you read them, you will find a list of driver files, as shown above in the
Source Disk Files. Nearly all of these files will be installed to the C:\Windows\System\
folder. Note that a number of them have very similar first several letters, in this
case, 3dfx. They will be grouped together in the system folder.
Use this list to track down and delete these files. Check them off the list
as you find them. Look in the C:\Windows\ folder if you do not find
them in the system folder. If not there, use Find to locate and
delete them.
- Now look for the registry keys in the INF
file. You may find several listings. Look for AddReg headings
like this:
[Voodoo2.AddReg]
HKLM,hardware\DirectDrawDrivers\472BEA00-40DF-11D1-A9-DF-00-60-97-C2-ED-B2,"Description",,"Voodoo2
DirectX 6 Driver"
HKLM,hardware\DirectDrawDrivers\472BEA00-40DF-11D1-A9-DF-00-60-97-C2-ED-B2,"DriverName",,"3DFXV2"
HKLM,SOFTWARE\"3Dfx Interactive"\Voodoo2
HKLM,SOFTWARE\"3Dfx Interactive"\Voodoo2\D3D
HKLM,SOFTWARE\"3Dfx Interactive"\Voodoo2\Glide
HKLM,"SoftWare\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\3Dfx Interactive
Voodoo2",,,
HKLM,"SoftWare\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\3Dfx Interactive
Voodoo2","DisplayName",,"3Dfx Interactive Voodoo2"
HKLM,"SoftWare\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\3Dfx Interactive
Voodoo2","UninstallString",,"%10%\rundll.exe
setupx.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 2 %17%\Voodoo2.inf"
These are the key registry keys. Note that almost all
of them happen to have Voodoo2 in them. How fortunate, since that means you can
search for them in the registry. The one that does not have Voodoo2 in it, shown in
red, actually part of the same key as the prior one, so you will remove them
together. How do you do this? With a built-in editor called regedit.
- Run regedit. Do this by opening the Start Menu,
selecting Run and entering regedit in the command
box. You will then see:
- The left side window looks like an Explorer folder tree of the
various major keys. Looking the the list above, we are most concerned about HKLM,
short for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key group. You can expand that key
folder and start to navigate through the subfolder looking for the keys in the list above.
For example, the key:
HKLM,SOFTWARE\"3Dfx Interactive"\Voodoo2
will show up in regedit like this:
- Under this you will find the Voodoo2 subkey, with D3D and
Glide under that. Deleting the Voodoo2 key will delete the subkeys. If there
are no other keys left under the 3Dfx Interactive key heading, you can delete it, too.
Moving on down the registry key list, you will see:
[Voodoo2.DelReg]
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\3dfx Interactive\Voodoo2"
This a key removal that you can ignore. Moving on..
[Voodoo2.Enum]
HKLM,Enum\PCI\VEN_121A&DEV_0002
Finding this one is a little more difficult because you will find the ENUM branch to be
chuck full of bizarre numbered entries, but looking for VEN_121A will get you there.
Delete. Moving on...below you see a bunch of keys that refer to the 3Dfx
Voodoo2 property sheet. You could use regedit's Find function in
the Edit drop down menu to help you locate them.
[Voodoo2.AddControl]
HKCR,\CLSID\{00BD7141-4A41-11d1-89EA-0020AFC43773},"",,"3Dfx Voodoo2
Property Sheet"
HKCR,\CLSID\{00BD7141-4A41-11d1-89EA-0020AFC43773}\InProcServer32,"",,"3DfxV2ps.dll"
HKCR,\CLSID\{00BD7141-4A41-11d1-89EA-0020AFC43773}\InProcServer32,ThreadingModel,,"Apartment"
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls
Folder\Display\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\Voodoo2",,,"{00BD7141-4A41-11d1-89EA-0020AFC43773}"
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell
Extensions\Approved","{00BD7141-4A41-11d1-89EA-0020AFC43773}",,"3Dfx
Voodoo2 Property Sheet"
This is about it. One last step I would do is to run
regedit's Find using 3Dfx as the search term to see if
you locate references to the driver files. You may find them under dll listings in
the registry. You can delete them too if they match the list of files in the INF
file.
- Close regedit.
- Delete the INF file. Astute readers may have noticed
that the VOODOO2.INF file had some uninstall keys...running uninstall as I mentioned
should have completed most or all of the driver and registry deletions above, but I have
used the VOODOO2.INF file just as an example of how to read and use INF files for driver
purging. If you follow this, you should be free of driver remnants and can proceed
to install your new card in a more clean environment. Do the same with your current
video card if it does not have a driver uninstall feature.
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This page is last updated Sunday,
May 23, 2004
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