G200 driver problem woes

[Trilce]

OK, this is a strange one folks.

only recently started having this problem.

To make a very very long story short, anything up to and including 4.33.* drivers work (including 4.51). anything 5.x and above...doesn't work.

The symptoms: install 5.x drivers, reboot, display initialization (GUI) fails on boot up, gotta restart computer, skipping safe mode because nothing useful happens there, trust me....after starting up, GUI starts, but I get a message about the display settings don't work with my card...ooook....So i go into display properties, define resolution, define adapter (even the *same* adapter driver version i just installed), and it says i gotta reboot, so i do...windows doesn't do a full reboot, just gets to a black screen and says windows is now restarting (and it does) and it loads the new g200 drivers! wtf??? So i go ahead and do a full reboot...and guess what, the process repeats, GUI doesn't start, reboot, start up w/ apparently vga.sys in 640x480 res. (and that funky message about settings not supported by my card)...the G200 is listed as the display driver in windows here too, which is odd.

Anyways, on to the trouble shooting i've done.

after spending a couple hours fruitlessly poking around in system.ini, win.ini, and the registry...i decided to do some bootlogging, and some driver experiments.

what i've found is this:

4.33m: works
4.51: works
anything earlier than than: works

5.20: doesn't work (in fact, the setup doesn't recognize that a compatable card is in my system!! so i can't even install this)
5.25: breaks the system as described
5.30: ditto
5.41: same

It appears the problem lies somewhere between 4.33m and 5.20...no intermediate drivers released by matrox between 4.33m and 5.20

Yes yes yes, i have been uninstalling and reinstalling drivers properly according to matrox' instructions, heck, i was at such a loss, i've tried installing them on top of each other (older first of course).

This has never happened to me before with this card and these drivers....i'm baffled. I've even tried reinstalling windows! and i see the same behavior...i'm beginning to wonder if it's a problem with the card itself (hardware) and not the drivers....i've tried flashing using 1.04 (whatever) downloaded from matrox...i'm going to try 3.51 package d/led from g200.com (we'll see, i don't expect improvement)...I'm not going to do this tonight, i'm going to bed, tomorrow night i'll try....i fully expect to be disappointed.

if you want bootlog.txt, bootlog.prv (which are logs of failed attempts), system.ini, win.ini, or registry entries, lemme know.

System Info:
Abit BX6
256 mb Samsung -GH SDRAM
Adaptec 2940UW
Matrox MGA-G200 8mb
Diamond Monster 3dII (voodoo2 2.54/3.x glide)
SB Live (liveware 3.0)
Win95 B w/ Plus!
Office 97
dx7
IE5.01

currently running 4.33m version drivers for G200, the latest i can run w/o breaking the display.

[HedsSpaz]

Two things I can think of to start with. 1st, check for IRQ conflicts. 2nd, try pulling out the Monster 3dII.

Hope that helps some,
HedsSpaz

[Trilce]

Ok...no IRQ conflicts (i did check this already) Device Manager is showing shared resources w/ p2 agp bridge, but that's ok, that's the way it should be.

i recently installed another 128 mb of samsung -gh ram...so i took that out, i also removed the voodoo2...so joy.

this never happened before...the first time was after installing office 2k over office 97...i wound up reinstalling windows, but after reinstalling windows, things were cool until i installed the win95y2k.exe patch....

as best i can tell, the problem exists in the registry. I was looking over the .inf file and finding keys that were supposed to be modified by the install...and it appears it's not writing all changes to the registry or copying all files to their proper locations....pdkernel.dll is a suspect dll/registry change...some other things in the inf....

the way the display attempts to initialize indicates possibly something with the registry. the bootlogs indicate the same..(i think).

but that's how far i've gotten...something going on when the setup (5.x) tries to write to the registry

[HedsSpaz]

I've had installation problems that sound very similar to that. I don't know what I did to make them stop but I don't have those problems anymore. Anyway, while I was having said install problems I discovered that if you do an update driver all of the files will be copied properly and the registry will be properly updated even though the install won't work. You could try that, or another thought, win95y2k.exe patch implies that you are using Win95. You probably won't like this idea but if you can get a copy of it you might want to consider formating and intsalling Win98 instead.

Definately try doing an update driver first though.

Hope that helps some
HedsSpaz

[Trilce]

You read my mind (or i read yours) I tried that when i got home from work tonight. Went to device manager and did a driver update. that didn't work...i'm still having the same problem. It's so hard to find which files are not loading, what file is calling them to be loaded, if it isn't a file loading problem, but a problem with pdesk.exe, don't know if it's a problem writing to the registry.

Windows truly blows for error logging. This is why i still prefer FreeBSD. Get this, install new drivers (any which way, update driver in device manager..whatever), reboot..display doesn't start, reboot, starts up w/ vga...pdesk says there isn't a driver installed that supports that version of power desk....then display properties window pops up automatically (only the settings tab) and i don't have to do *anything* and click ok/close and windows reboots (not a full reboot, just says "windows is not restarting" in a black screen...and the proper drivers load, power desk loads......ARGH...if i reboot now, repeat above....so if i want to run the latest drivers in this current situation, every time i reboot...i've gotta do it 3 times, and i have no idea where the problem really exists....this weekend i'm reinstalling windows *again*

This makes me sad If it has anything to do with the order in which i install stuff, i'm gonna do it like so:

OS updates
device drivers
ie
ie patches
apps
games

and after i'm done with a marathon install of everything i want, i'm using Norton Ghost to put a sector-by-sector image of all 4 of my uwscsi drives onto optical PD cartridges...and as i do it i'll cry out, "NEVER AGAIN! NEVER AGAIN! NEVER AGAIN!"

*sigh*

p.s. i installed win95 se for 24 hours once, formtted drive because the bitchass OS kept replacing my registry with bunk shit, disabled things with msconfig and i even renamed the registry backup exe thing....but win98 fought back with some damn thing that ran in dos before win98 booted...that was the last straw...i reformatted seconds later

[Marshmallowman]

are you overclocking?(registry corruption is common if your overclock to much)

But apart from that, if you have strange lockups is always a good ide to reseat a few things especially your ram, and video card.

have you used the matrox vacuum cleaner(old driver remover)
have you have IRQ assign in bios.
tried a differnt AGP apertuer setting in bios
I have never had a problem with AGP aperture, whatever size I set for it (BH6,g200,Celery450,(98SE), but some other people have reported that it may help)

If is always best to do a clean install with 98SE.(Don't do a 95 upgrade to 98)

Oh and lastly, I know a few people who had BX6's and keept having problem until they moved there SDRam to the dimm slots closest to the processor.

hope that helps