Win ME conflict with G200 drivers?

[philipklein]

I did a clean install of Win ME on my son's computer with another video card. He wanted a faster card to play some games so I switched the G200 Mystique card into his computer (I have given up on Matrox coming out with a new mid-range card and am getting a Geforece2 MX card for my computer in the next week or so) and loaded the 5.25 drivers. His computer continually freezes up now. In the 2 or so times it has fully booted up (out of ~30 reboots), attempts to change the resolution from 640x480 to 1024x768 immediately froze the computer. Most of the time the computer freezes when Win ME preforms scandisk in the booting sequence after I recycle the frozen computer.

I used the 5.25 drivers as they are stable for me with Win 98 and I remember comments from others on the BBS that they are a stable release. If I go to Safe Mode and delete the 5.25 drivers, the driver search function (play and pray) in Win Me that searches for new drivers is unable to find any suitable drivers on the Win ME CD-ROM.

Should I try another set of drivers for Win ME? The new PD 6.04 drivers? I am open to suggestions.

Equipment:
AMD K6-2 300 MHz
Matrox G200 Mystique
Asus P5A motherboard
64MB PC100 Micron RAM
Maxtor 5.25GB DiamondMax IDE harddrive
ADI 17" Monitor
MS Mouse
Generic Keyboard

[Holerith]

Asus P5A motherboard

Did you install the VIA drivers before the Matrox drivers? I'm not sure if it is an issue with ME or not.



------------------
Dean
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PDP-11, Dec-writer & ZD-11 Terminal Unit, RSTS-OS

[RAB]

Philip:
Both the 5.41 and the newest 6.04 drivers are stable with K6 CPU's and chipsets. Uninstall the old 5.25 drivers using the Matrox uninstaller and then install either of the newer drivers. However, don't use the 5.52 drivers with a K6 as they have problems with any games that use Direct 3d (which is about 90% of the games out there.)
RAB

[ganyaik]

Yeah, RAB's right. Use version 5.41 or 6. They've worked in my old K6 sys, others not.

[philipklein]

Thanks for your replies. I will try the PD 6 drivers. I realized after I posted my question that I had not installed the Ali (not Via) drivers (including APG driver) for the Asus P5A. While I would hope Win ME would have the appropriate drivers for the motherboard, you never know, especially with MS.

- Phil Klein

[philipklein]

I uninstalled the 6.04 drivers, installed the latest Ali AGP driver (1.69) and attempted to reinstall the 6.04 drivers but now the computer can't seem to find the G200 card. When I ran setup.exe from the expanded 6.04 folder, the program said it could not find any Matrox card in the computer. When I tried to update the drivers from the System icon in the Control panel ("manually" what someone else described it as), it also could not find the G200. Why can the computer no longer find the G200?

System:
Asus P5A
AMD K6-2
Mystique G200
64Mb PC100 RAM
Maxtor 5.2Gb UDMA harddrive

- Phil Klein

[RAB]

Phil,
The 6.0x drivers do not include the G200 in their INSTALL.INF file, so no G200 is available in a normal install. However, there is a simple way around this and the 6.0x drivers will install just fine for a G200. Here's what you do.

1) In the folder for your 6.04 drivers, find a file called INSTALL.INF. Rename it to INSTALL.604 so that you won't lose it.

2) In the folder for your 5.41 drivers (or whatever 5.xx drivers you might have), find the INSTALL.INF file and copy it to the 6.04 driver folder. This will provide the 6.04 drivers with the correct .INF file for a G200 installation and the G200 will now appear in the list when you install the 6.04 drivers.

3) Its best to use the Matrox uninstaller program to start all over again and get rid of any remaining stray Matrox files. After uninstalling reboot and reinstall VGA mode drivers. Reboot again and finally install the 6.04 drivers (which should now contain the proper listing for a G200).

Hope this helps, let us know how it goes.

RAB

[This message has been edited by RAB (edited 02 October 2000).]

[philipklein]

I tried to add more to my message I posted yesterday but a screwy keyboard (spurious characters appearing, jumping around the entry box) prevented it. But the prior message brought up the issue I meant to add.

When I expand the 6.04 drivers, there is NO install.inf file, just various incomplete files such as G200.dr_, some text files, and one inf file- EFIGS.inf. I tried to install the drivers using the EFIGS.inf file (right clicking on the file, choose install) but it did not work. Interestingly, the EFIGS.inf file DOES have G200 entries.

I did expand the 5.41 drivers and there is an install.inf file there. I gather that you recommend that I transfer the install.inf file from the 5.41 drivers to the 6.04 expansion folder and run the install.inf file from there, right?

I am at work now but will try it tonight when I get home. I will let you know how it works.

Also, as to the uninstall program, I assume you are referring to the program that Matrox provided for uninstalling the PD 5 series, correct? I did run that before trying to install the 6.04 drivers. I believe I did get the 6.04 drivers installed before somehow (but with poor Ali AGP support I believe(hope)) and they seem to include their own uninstall program. Is that correct?

Thanks for your help.

[RAB]

Phil,
You are correct about the uninstall program. That's the one. Matrox strongly recommends it before every driver change.

Sorry about the .INF files. I haven't installed the 6.04 drivers yet since I have the 6.01 drivers already and didn't think I needed to change yet. I didn't realize that the 6.04 drivers had a different .INF file. I had to copy over the 5.41 .INF file to my 6.01 folder to install the 6.01 drivers and they worked just fine on the G200.

You could still copy over the 5.41 INSTALL.INF file to the 6.04 folder and see what happens during install. If its not needed, it should just get ignored and therefore shouldn't hurt anything. If it doesn't work, I guess the next thing to try would be renaming the INSTALL.INF to EFIGS.INF, but I don't know what that would do. Just save or rename the original EFIGS.INF before you try so you have a backup. I'll try installing the 6.04's on my G200 tonight and see what happens.

RAB

[RAB]

Phil,
I installed the 6.04 drivers in Win98SE (not ME) by copying over the INSTALL.INF from the 5.41 folder to the 6.04 folder. That's all you need to do.

Something upset my AGP drivers so I had to reinstall them after I installed the 6.04 drivers. But once I did that, the 6.04 drivers ran fine. They are still not as fast as the 5.41 drivers, by about 10%, but they do overclock much better than the 6.01 drivers. However, the colors seemed a bit brighter. Maybe that's just because its late and I'm seeing things. I'll leave them in for a while and "see how they look in the morning".

RAB

P.S. My system is a K6-3 450, so its not that much different than yours. Except its a VIA chipset (Epox MB).