Tried Driver Update, what went wrong?

[TRDLE]

I purchased a Matrox vanilla G-400 last fall and installed it with the shipped drivers (4.11.01.1110)Everything worked fine on my system (K6-2 350 mhz, 128mg ram, ACORP-5ALI61 Mainboard. Since all I hear is "Update your drivers" I asked some questions on the forum, downloaded all the Tech documents, and it was suggested by someone on the board that I go with the Revision 5.30.007, or 4.11.01.1300 because with my system they thought this would be the most stable. I downloaded the files and just kept them for a few months until I got the nerve to try it. Today I did. I followed all instructions. Ran the Uninstall utility off the CD, changed my driver to Standard VGA, looked for any files related to Matrox, looked in the registry, and when I was satisfied installed the new drivers. Everything looked great until I tried to actually run something on my computer. I tried to benchmark with 3DMARK 99 max just to see if it made any difference, it locked up, I tried to play Unreal Tournament. Locked up on the introduction and after rebooting I couldn't even get to the introduction. I went online to ask some questions in the forum and it locked up here too!!! I was trapped. I went back and reset the driver to standard VGA and went back online to go to the Matrox Tech support and downloaded the uninstaller utility. Ran it but it didn't seem to remove any files, so I did a complete search and checked the registry and then reinstalled the shipped drivers off the CD. At least so far I have been able to get back into the forum long enough to post this question, but so far everything seems back to normal, next I'll try running UT and see if thats okay. Any suggestions of what I might have done wrong? Thanks.

[Electric Amish]

Sounds like you did it right.

I would try the latest PD6.01beta drivers and see if that helps..

amish

[Brian R.]

A couple of things may be relevant. Did you ignore Windows' attempt to load drivers upon boot-up? Did you then use the installation program which came with the drivers?

What was (I know, difficult to answer) the condition of your Device Manager listings when you were unable to run programs with the updated drivers? There may have been (and may still be) multiple listings for various devices including video card and monitor. These are a problem if they occur (duh).

Anyway, I'll look back later.

[TRDLE]

Thanks for the suggestions, yes I did check Device Manager to insure only one device was listed for both the video adapter, and the monitor(just as the instructions say)When I rebooted the first time after uninstalling windows did detect the lack of a driver and did install a pci vga driver, but I changed it to standard vga per instructions, and rebooted. After I was done I checked with Device Manager just to see if it had updated the driver.

[Liquid Snake]

When Windows detects the G400, it should ask for drivers, then you should point it to the directory where the new drivers are.

[Brian R.]

LS - I don't know how the current drivers are, but until very recently, you had to not install any drivers when Windows asks you to and boot up into Windows with VGA display. Then after this, you installed the drivers with the install utility in the drivers directory and never really told Windows what you were doing. Sort of stealth driver installation...

[Brian R.]

TRDL - Did you point Windows at the VGA driver, or did you just cancel the driver installation program. I have always had good luck with canceling the installation dialog box and then swallow any error messages. Then I used the installation program.

Another possibility. Does your processor get really hot? Some of the K6s were prone to get toasty. That's ok if everything is new, but maybe your heatsink is really dirty and/or you fan isn't up to par anymore. Check to see if these are normal.

You also might try returning your BIOS settings to default (after writing down the old ones). Sometimes the MB settings get whanged or maybe you need to update the MB BIOS with the most recent one.

[TRDLE]

Thank you all for your comments, in retrospect I think I may have made a mistake at the very beginning between setting the video on standard vga and running the Matrox uninstall utility to remove the original drivers. I also made a standard newbie coldfeet response to a computer glitch. Going into a panic and restoring the old instead of forging ahead and trying to correct the new. Brian I just cleaned my case out last week, and took apart the fan and heatsink and cleaned it (it was full of dust). Again thanks, I love these forums.

[Greeble]

Oh dear.. I have had so many problems like this over the years.. (I have a K62-350 too and a G200).
The BIOS is a good place to look, but resetting it to defaults might not make much difference... From reading loads and loads of messages on here I found there were several things that had to be disabled in the BIOS to get the card to work properly with DirectX and OpenGL at AGP 2X.. I never managed to get a definitive list tho, and the recommendations for BIOS settings usually came from different people at different times... I never got it to work properly and have recently been having new problems (See my recent topic..)
I think the only solution for me is to get a new motherboard and processor (Hopefully avoiding both K6-2s, VIA and Award BIOS..) or get a new gfx card, which would probably be a G400 and not give me much less problems.. :}
I think what would be really useful is a complete list of everything that needs to be done for a perfect matrox configuration (ie ALL the relevant settings for each chipset whatever, anomalies of the different driver versions, the correct order to install the drivers, directx, gart, etc... And preferably in one document, not lots of different faqs or whatever... A bit of a mammoth task, I agree but it would help a lot of people..
Oh oops big post sorry

[mynx]

I couldn't get anything after 5.25 to work with my G200 machine, Until 6.01. Also I found a method that I now use that works much better on my G200. After cleaning everything out in safe mode, I reboot back into safe mode and run the PD install program. I then reboot, when asked for the drivers click ok, windows will find them already in the system folder. Or you can point them out in the mgafold.
I recommend trying 6.01 with your G400. All of my computers are K6's & VIA chipsets.

[This message has been edited by mynx (edited 18 August 2000).]