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alice1
September 24th, 2002, 06:28 PM
a friend of mine recently had a new video card installed in order to play some newer games. when he began to play again, he began to experience program errors. following windows troubleshooting procedures he set his graphics hardware acceleration to low (from a previous setting of high).

on the low setting, the windows logo never left the screen after startup. the system will partly set up if he uses the ESC key but he says he hears several error reports when he does so.

he tried using the emergency setup floppy but it told him the settings have changed so he must try starting up in safe mode from DOS. only, using the safe mode default settings causes the system to shut down, prolly because the original video circuit is disabled to allow for the new card (n-vidia g force 4 mx420)...

he wonders:
is there a way from DOS to set the graphics acceleration back to high?
if not, is there anything you can recommend he try?
or, who could i ask who might be able to offer a solution?

-alice

jtdoom
September 25th, 2002, 06:43 AM
hi
and welcome.

we have no idea about the system your friend has.
We might be able to advise if we have more details.

anyway, I have a few guesses.
the motherboard may NOT support the capabilities of the card at all.
AGP backward compatibility can only go so far...
if the original videosystem is on the motherboard itself, then you want to look up wether the mobo can support the AGP multiplier of this geforce 4. (it should have have at least AGP X2)

OR... because you say it reboots, it could also be that the powersupply is not powerful enough, so than when the card kicks in and starts drawing juice, that the mobo decides to restart.
This can happen when the powersupply is too weak, and +5Vsb dips too low.

I hope you can provide more detail on this system.