DXDiag questions and confusion

[lesagirlwalton]

Merry Christmas from Clifton Forge VA!
Long story short (hopefully)
I have a Gateway, AMD Athlon MMX 3D Now~1Ghz processor. 192MB Ram
Sound Blaster Live! sound card (updated driver)
Running Windows 2000 Prof.
Just bought and installed an NVidia GeForce MX 4000 3D Fuzion graphics card with 128MB.
Also updated power supply because of the new Nvidia.

A few of my childrens' games wouldn't work (thus the reason for buying the new graphics card.) I've checked the system requirements and all should be fine. HOWEVER......... a couple games still aren't working so I started searching. When running DXDiag all goes well until the part that says "Direct 3D 7 interfaces" It immediately gives a message that states "you cancelled the test by pressing a key." Needless to say, I have not pressed anything. The same thing happens for the "direct 3D 8 interfaces." BUT when it tests the "Direct 3D 9 interfaces" it goes through without trouble. Here is a copy of the exact info saved by DXDiag. Thank you in advance for any advice. ~Lesa~

Registry: OK
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
AGP Status: Enabled
DDraw Test Result: All tests were successful.
D3D7 Test Result: The tests were cancelled before completing.
D3D8 Test Result: The tests were cancelled before completing.
D3D9 Test Result: All tests were successful.

[confus-ed]

Hi & welcome to WD forums.

So this is a new one on me, but a bit of googling seems to suggest a whole load of folks have gotten this, & the solution seems to be judicious stopping of Non-windows services & spurious background programs.

This by way of illustration (http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win2000/t1038051021)

[lesagirlwalton]

Thanks for the reply. I will have to dig in tonight and try some of the things listed here. I'm thinking I may just be better off returning the card and going with something other than the Nvidia. They seem to have many problems! Most of the PC games my kids have asked for from Santa require a decent video card and the last thing I want is for them not to work on Christmas afternoon.........

I'm wondering if I should reinstall the other card and try these things as well. Sometimes I hate computers.................... but i can't live without them!

smiles!

[confus-ed]

..I'm thinking I may just be better off returning the card and going with something other than the Nvidia...

You may well be, but I will suggest that instead of having Nvidia issues, you'll just get ATI(or some other video card manufacturer) issues instead - what's causing issue appears to be 3rd party (non Windows) products & services, that ANY video card manufacturer mighn't take notice of, or test for compliance .. Given the complexity of windoze its impossible to test every bit of kit & its drivers against any possible add in product.

Based on what evidence I have, it appears to be something else other than the Nvidia drivers causing the issue, just because the drivers error out, its not necessarily them that are the actual cause, as if something else isn't doing its job right the effect just carries through until something else finds it can't do its job right & goes splat ..

I'd follow your own suggestion & refit the original card & see if you can repeat this - I just don't want you either spending more money or having the bother of exchanging your card only to discover its some other bit of software that's either not configured properly or actually causing this .. :)