Variety of Nvidia 66.93 install questions -- thanks!

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Greetings all!

I was recently playing a computer game (Myst IV) and hit a fatal
technical glitch. I contacted the game manufacturer (Ubisoft) and,
after I gave them info about my system, they told me to update my sound
card and the driver for my Nvidia GeForce2 hardware. I updated the
sound card ok (which sadly did not fix the glitch) and also updated my
Nvidia driver (which was version 5.2.1.6) to 66.93.

When I tried to play the game with the newly installed driver, the game
would close down immediately after the intro screen for the game popped
up. So I went back to my old driver by using system restore. Now I am
back to my original technical glitch.

So my questions are as follows:
(1) How do I know when I should update my Nvidia driver? Should I
rely on my Windows updater to tell me when I should update, or does the
updater not address these kinds of updates?
(2) Is it possible that I got a corrupted download of 66.93? I would
not have thought this could happen, but very recently I downloaded a
patch which would not install, so in desperation, I downloaded it again
from this same source, and the new version installed fine!
(3) I did not clean off my old driver with anything other than the
uninstall/install wizard prior to installing 66.93. Is it possible
that some remaining dregs from the old driver prevented the new driver
from working properly? If so, what should I use to wipe all dregs of
the old driver?
(4) Have people been having problems with 66.93?

Note that I recognize that it is entirely possible that my Nvidia stuff
is fine, and it is just some problem related to the Ubisoft product I
am trying to use. My computer is a Dell 8200 running XP.

Thanks for any help!

Chuck

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

> (3) I did not clean off my old driver with anything other than the
> uninstall/install wizard prior to installing 66.93.
Did you restart?
Then it should come up with a generic driver, possibly in 640 x 480
(reorders your icons a bit). XP will want to install something, but just
cancel it. Then run the nvidia install.


--
Ed Light

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Send spam to the FTC at
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Thanks, robots.

 

[Nero]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

GeForce2 is way to old for games................
and no, windows update cannot let you know of 3rd party divers, only windows
stuff.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

On 4 Feb 2005 22:18:37 -0800, dncmullin@yahoo.com wrote:

>(1) How do I know when I should update my Nvidia driver? Should I
>rely on my Windows updater to tell me when I should update, or does the
>updater not address these kinds of updates?

Although MS would undoubtedly like to be the sole source of all software
for all systems everywhere, they aren't. Updating drivers for add-on
hardware is your responsibility. Some vendors will provide update
notifications via e-mail if you opt-in.

>(2) Is it possible that I got a corrupted download of 66.93? I would
>not have thought this could happen, but very recently I downloaded a
>patch which would not install, so in desperation, I downloaded it again
>from this same source, and the new version installed fine!

Errors happen. Even with a low bit error rate on a CRC protected
channel, a very large file might have an error. The Linux community
routinely provides MD5 checksums for files like this. MD5 is a hashing
function that creates a "very long checksum" (not exactly but more or
less) so you can run MD5 on a file after a download and check your
results against the value listed on the download service. Absent that,
try another download to a different directory and compare the two files.

>(3) I did not clean off my old driver with anything other than the
>uninstall/install wizard prior to installing 66.93. Is it possible
>that some remaining dregs from the old driver prevented the new driver
>from working properly? If so, what should I use to wipe all dregs of
>the old driver?

AFAIK, the driver installation routines that are packaged by NVidia are
much better than in the "old days" and can deal with left over bits from
previous versions. Note that there are sites that provide "leaked"
versions of NVidia drivers that may or may not come with a complete
installation routine.

>(4) Have people been having problems with 66.93?

I did, running a 6600GT/AGP. The issue had to do with an incompatibility
between the driver and the motherboard's SiS chipset and was corrected
in 67.03.

>Note that I recognize that it is entirely possible that my Nvidia stuff
>is fine, and it is just some problem related to the Ubisoft product I
>am trying to use. My computer is a Dell 8200 running XP.

There are issues with the NVidia video drivers and WinXP Service Pack 2.
SP2, by default, enforces stricter checking on code execution for kernel
processes. Google for "nvidia noexecute" or similar for several
discussions of this problem and instructions on how to set it.

Try the following for some alternatives to the official NVidia releases.
Some may work better, some worse or not at all. Some of the drivers are
official, some are "leaked" or beta versions. Rumor has it that NVidia
knows about the leakage and unofficially winks at it as a way of getting
beta versions out to the community for testing and feedback. YMMV.

http://whitebunny.demon.nl/hardware/chipset_nvidia.html
http://downloads.guru3d.com/

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA