Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of joplus
joplus

asked on

strange video-driver problem

specs:

NT40 server, sp3, ie4 (no active desktop), 96M, p166mmx.  The video "card"
is an s3 trio integrated on the motherboard.  The monitor is a very cheap
2-yr-old compudyne which is starting to show signs of aging.

recently I have had various video-driver problems (likely due to ie4) and
have had to reinstall my video drivers several times.  I have tried
installing the latest drivers from s3's site as well as the drivers
provided on the NT4 cd.  The video problems are about as solved as they're
going to get for now, but every time I boot the machine, the event viewer
shows over a dozen "stop" messages descibing conflicting video drivers I
don't even have (cirrus, for example).  every one of these drivers show up
in Devices and as a test I tried disabling one of them ("mga"), and this
one no longer shows up in the event-viewer free-for-all at every boot.  I
have considered disabling all the other devices but have not tried this
yet.

Has anyone else experienced this?  It seems as though NT is trying to load
every possible video driver at boot.  This is more of an annoyance than a
problem; the video is kind of crummy but I can live with it.  I just don't
like all these event-viewer messages.

thanks in advance for any advice.


Karen Collins
Avatar of j2
j2
Flag of Sweden image

Yep, i have seen that, it is caused by some installation program tuning AMOK! (havent seen it with IE4 tho) but it is safe to disable all the renigade ones...
Avatar of british041297
british041297

I recognise this problem - well kinda anyway. I had a similar
thing under Win95.

You are right that NT is trying to load lots and lots of video drivers. One way around is simply to disable the excess devices but another possibly cleaner route is to boot into SAFE MODE (sic) and purge those nasty devices from there. You may find that you have several copies of other device drivers also.

anyway

hope that helps

Avatar of joplus

ASKER

sorry, j2, but that's not really an answer (doesn't tell me how to solve the problem).

i'm not quite sure how to disable all the drivers NT is trying to load, except for disabling them in Devices in control panel.  what I'm really looking for is why NT wants to load all the drivers in the first place, and how to get it to stop.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of j2
j2
Flag of Sweden image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of joplus

ASKER

OK...I get it now.  Thanks.
I am villing to bet that the onboard video is either a S3 864 or a S3 Virge+ if so, i know it is the install programs ;)
Avatar of joplus

ASKER

i think it is an s3 trio rather than virge.  during the past year I have installed directx 3, pcAnywhere 7.5 and IE4, all of which are known to mess with video.  but I thought replacing the driver with the latest  from s3 (or at least with the "original" driver that's on the NT cd) would set things back to normal.  Still NT insists on loading every driver known to man when it starts up.  I will disable every non-s3 device (one by one, mind you) and see whether the event-viewer messages stop.
Ah! But look at it this way: If the drivers has been enabled once, only a correct system call (or manual disabling them) will shut them off.

The new s3 drivers does not think like "Well, and now we shall check if a previosu version of me turned all the drivers on" and fix that :)
Avatar of joplus

ASKER

i understand, but NT actually has a reason for this behavior sometimes; if you ever boot to VGA mode or if you click "Detect" in the Display properties NT will actually warn you it's going to load every video driver it has and see which one matches the your hardware.  During the course of my frustration with my machine's video I have at times both booted to VGA mode and asked NT to detect my video for me.  but once NT detects the "proper" video driver for the system it's supposed to remember that, not re-detect at every boot.  At least that's what I thought  :)
No, it only remembers it if you do it from the normal mode. When using the /SOS /BASEVIDEO mode, it is only supposed to get your machine up and running.. not being estetically pleasing :=)