PLEASE HELP!! - Video Card Setup Problem

I recently installed a new ABIT SA6R motherboard (Intel 815E based) in my computer and I'm having a really difficult time getting my GeForce2 based video card to use a driver other than the Standard VGA (640x480 16 color) one. I've been trying for a WEEK now and I'M GOING CRAZY - PLEASE, PLEASE HELP ME!!

Here are the facts:

1) I have a Leadtek GeForce2 Pro 64 MB AGP (4x) and it worked fine with my old BX motherboard.

2) I'm using Windows ME and all the LATEST drivers for everything (including BIOS for my motherboard).

3) Before installing the new motherboard, I deleted EVERYTHING from my hardware profile to assure that Win ME re-recognized my hardware. I've done this before when installing and it has always worked. I also switched to Standard VGA and removed any video drivers and related video card utilities that I had in my system (I'm sure of this).

4) AFTER installing the motherboard, I did not put any other card in except the video card. It works fine in Standard VGA mode but will not load the correct GeForce drivers to get beyond 640x480, 16 colors. I tried numerous different drivers including the reference ones.

5) I tried putting ANOTHER video card in (TNT2) and it STILL did not work, so it's not the video card (and I tried my GeForce2 on ANOTHER computer and it DID work).

6) I tried numerous different setting in my BIOS (probably every conceivable combination that relate to video) without success.

7) I reinstalled WinME over the existing copy without changing the registry and it did not work.

8) O.K. - Here is the WEIRD part. I deleted the registry and the Win.ini, sys.ini files, THEN reinstalled WinME, and it DID WORK!! So this means it's NOT the motherboard but a registry problem. However, this gives me a situation whereas I have to now install over 100+ programs, many with multiple patches, which I REALLY don't want to do!!

9) I reloaded the OLD registry (that I saved BEFORE step 8 above) but I had the same video problem again (it did not work).

10) Now, for some reason, I cannot get BACK a working GeForce driver even if I repeat the steps in #8 above (although I really don't want to do this anyway). I have no idea why it worked the first time. It's probably referencing some registry backup that I can't find.

So, this appears to be some problem with the REGISTRY settings, unless step #8 above was just a one time hardware fluke. I did NOT try to reformat the harddrive and reinstall WinME on a clean system, since I do not have a good backup system to get back my files (and again, I'm trying to avoid this anyway, so please don't suggest doing it).

Does ANYONE have ANY ideas what this registry problem may be??

PLEASE HELP ME!!

Thanks,

Tony

2 questions

are there any conflicts in the device manager? and are you sure that you've had the right driver for the agp controller installed BEFORE you loaded the driver for the video card?

"2 questions are there any conflicts in the device manager?"

-- No conflicts whatsoever - It's really clean. Not even any resource sharing.

" and are you sure that you've had the right driver for the agp controller installed BEFORE you loaded the driver for the video card?"

-- The AGP controller loaded itself when I booted for the first time after having deleted the hardware profile then installing the motherboard. I assume this is the latest one coming from Win ME (date June 2000) - I do not see an update on the Abit or MS sites.

I'm not sure of the sequence of when the video driver tried to load itself vs. the AGP controller (I would guess the video came first), but I have since deleted the display device and video drivers in the hardware profile and had the system refind it (with the AGP controller in tact) to no avail. It always loads the Standard VGA driver (it will not find the correct driver even when I specifically direct it to where it is via "Have Disk"), and it will not manually accept any other "correct" GeForce driver without crashing the system. It works perfectly in Standard VGA mode, however. No crashes or anything - But obviously this is not what I want.

Thanks - I hope you can think of something. My brain is completely fried!!

Tony

In case no-one can answer this question (I'm still REALLY hoping) - And before I buy a backup drive, then backup the system, then totally reformat my C: drive and reinstall Win ME, then install all 100+ programs, plus the patches and the data (ugh!!), I'm wondering about the following:

1) Is there ANY WAY this could be a HARDWARE problems with my motherboard rather than a software / registry / driver problem? I'd hate to do the above and find it still doesn't work!!

2) Is there any way to reinstall Win ME from scratch without it referencing the old registry setup. I deleted the user.dat and system.dat (and my wini.ini and sys.ini) files from the C:\Windows subdirectory, then booted to DOS and immediately reinstalled from DOS, but it still seems to have old registry entries. For some reason, it seemed to work the very first time I tried but never again - REALLY I don't want to reformat my C: drive. Is their another way to do this?

Thanks,

Tony

I believe in addition to deleting the win.in and user/system .dat you also need to rename win.com or delete it. Just a thought. Pardon me if you did this already. :cool:

Just a thought, but have you tried to boot to Safe Mode and check to see if ME-ssed up when installing your vid driver and left the standard VGA in your hardware profile as well.
See if more than one vid adapter is defined and delete them all if they are. Then reboot and use the Display Properties, Advanced tab to change the adapter type.

Please don't post the same topic in multiple forums. It just makes things confusing and wastes people's time duplicating someone else's ideas.

Go to this topic to participate/get your responses.

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