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OK guys this is a classic case of don't fix it if it ain't broken. I just started a new job the other day - I won't get too into that, but I was checking out how well patched one of our NT boxes was and noticed the video drivers were pretty old. Instead of just leaving be what was working I of course decided to upgrade them. BAD.
It's an HP Kayak XM600 machine, 600 MHz PIII with an OEM (from HP) Matrox G400 16mb dualhead card.
First I used the Matrox driver-uninstall utility (pd_unin201) to uninstall the current drivers. It claimed it would automatically set the driver temporarily to generic VGA, so I didn't do that separately. Then I rebooted into VGA mode and installed the latest Matrox G400 NT drivers, and rebooted again in normal mode. Didn't work, I got an error saying that the video drivers were either missing or corrupt.
So, I figured this was an OEM "HP" card and that perhaps I had to get a special driver from HP. Sure enough HP has a download site for Kayak XM600 drivers and amongst them is a different (older) version of the G400 driver than is at Matrox's site. Just to clarify it IS a 16MB dualhead G400, but included by HP in boxes they were selling. HP is supposed to support these instead of Matrox.
So I uninstalled the non-working current Matrox drivers, set the driver back to VGA (every time I do this the box gets confused and I have to point the driver-install applet to the already-installed vga.dll and vga.sys files), reboot, install the HP-branded matrox driver. SAME PROBLEM. I'm told my video driver is missing or invalid and my box remains at generic vga rez (640x480x4bpp).
Well I spent 2.5 hours diddling with it and made absolutely NO headway. I've now tried three driver sets - the latest Matrox, the latest HP, and the original HP that came with the system - which ironically were working JUST FINE until I decided to upgrade them. All of these fail with the same error that something is missing or damaged.
Help! Suggestions? I'm really hoping Matrox's driver uninstaller didn't take out half of my low-level video support. Incidentally there are NO errors in the event log for all of the problems I have been having.
Even after resetting my driver to generic VGA, if I try to boot in regular (non-VGA/safe) mode, I get an error saying my current video driver selection is invalid - please choose another driver. This is weird.
Another weird thing is that some of the shortcuts in the Matrox NT PowerDesk program group in the start menu DON'T WORK. Specifically there is a .CPL file (PowerDesk.cpl or mga_power.cpl or something) that points to a non existent file. huh?
I see the BIOS updates available from matroxusers.com but I'm paranoid about flashing an OEM card.
Any ideas, suggestions? Thanks - alas this is a heavily used machine at work and if it's not back cruising by 8:30am a bit of shit will fly.
It's an HP Kayak XM600 machine, 600 MHz PIII with an OEM (from HP) Matrox G400 16mb dualhead card.
First I used the Matrox driver-uninstall utility (pd_unin201) to uninstall the current drivers. It claimed it would automatically set the driver temporarily to generic VGA, so I didn't do that separately. Then I rebooted into VGA mode and installed the latest Matrox G400 NT drivers, and rebooted again in normal mode. Didn't work, I got an error saying that the video drivers were either missing or corrupt.
So, I figured this was an OEM "HP" card and that perhaps I had to get a special driver from HP. Sure enough HP has a download site for Kayak XM600 drivers and amongst them is a different (older) version of the G400 driver than is at Matrox's site. Just to clarify it IS a 16MB dualhead G400, but included by HP in boxes they were selling. HP is supposed to support these instead of Matrox.
So I uninstalled the non-working current Matrox drivers, set the driver back to VGA (every time I do this the box gets confused and I have to point the driver-install applet to the already-installed vga.dll and vga.sys files), reboot, install the HP-branded matrox driver. SAME PROBLEM. I'm told my video driver is missing or invalid and my box remains at generic vga rez (640x480x4bpp).
Well I spent 2.5 hours diddling with it and made absolutely NO headway. I've now tried three driver sets - the latest Matrox, the latest HP, and the original HP that came with the system - which ironically were working JUST FINE until I decided to upgrade them. All of these fail with the same error that something is missing or damaged.
Help! Suggestions? I'm really hoping Matrox's driver uninstaller didn't take out half of my low-level video support. Incidentally there are NO errors in the event log for all of the problems I have been having.
Even after resetting my driver to generic VGA, if I try to boot in regular (non-VGA/safe) mode, I get an error saying my current video driver selection is invalid - please choose another driver. This is weird.
Another weird thing is that some of the shortcuts in the Matrox NT PowerDesk program group in the start menu DON'T WORK. Specifically there is a .CPL file (PowerDesk.cpl or mga_power.cpl or something) that points to a non existent file. huh?
I see the BIOS updates available from matroxusers.com but I'm paranoid about flashing an OEM card.
Any ideas, suggestions? Thanks - alas this is a heavily used machine at work and if it's not back cruising by 8:30am a bit of shit will fly.
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