Help with install of new driver

[TRDLE]

I had installed the G-400 card on my AMD 350 system last fall, the driver is version 4.11.01, with Direct X ver 6.1. I started playing Unreal Tournament, and thought the game was slow and looked crappy. So I thought I would download the latest certified driver (5.20.013)and then update my Direct X to version 7. I downloaded the new driver into a seperate folder, and using the uninstaller on the Matrox CD I deleted the old drivers. But I could not get the new drivers to install. I would run the setup.exe file, and it would ask me what language, then the product to update, then it would say the new drivers were installed and I need to reboot, but everytime I did this it was obvious that it did not install the new driver, I finally gave up and ran the reinstall off the Matrox CD and put the system back to where it was, but even that took about 3 trys before it installed. What am I doing wrong? Can I just forget about the new drivers and just update direct X? I also updated UT from version 400 to 413, and that made no difference. If anyone can make any suggestions it would really be appreciated. Thanks.

[paulcs]

The certified drivers are by no means new. They are actually quite old, buggy, and slow. If I were you, I'd uninstall the shipping drivers, which may be older and buggier, and try Powerdesk 5.41 or 5.30.

I understand the 413 UT update has its share of bugs as well.

I doubt you're going to see dramatic speed differences from driver set to driver set, although anything has to be better than the certified and shipping drivers. (I assume you are using PD 5.11 and not 4.11) The G400 off-loads a lot of work to the CPU. This is great if you upgrade a lot and you're running fast PIII's or Althons. It's not so great if you're running a slow CPU on a slow platform.

You can get the 5.41 drivers here:

http://www.murc.ws/Driver/Win9x/PD5/w9x_541.exe


And the 5.30 drivers here:

http://www.murc.ws/Driver/Win9x/PD5/w9x_530.exe


After running Matrox's uninstaller, you may want to check that it uninstalled everything properly. Do a search in your Windows directory for drivers beginning with "G400" and "MGA." If you know how, check your registry as well. Of course, do this in Standard VGA mode.

You might want to consider updating your motherboard's drivers as well if you continue to have problems.

Don't get fooled by this Microsoft Certification business. It is not helpful in this context.

Good luck.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[TRDLE]

Thanks for your response. I wasn't totally disatisfied with the old driver versions, but I wanted to see if it helped. I did though reinstall UT with the DirectX ver 7 and updated UT to version 405b, and the game recognized my video card and after starting up again it looked and ran a lot better. I've been always nervous about tweaking my system seems like everytime you fix one problem you grow another.

[jackzod]

Since you're on a SS7 board, I would go with the 5.31 first, they seem to be more stable with those boards than the 5.41.