Graphics Card Trouble!

[Laguna]

Ok, I cant stand this- I formatted my harddrive a few months back and ever since my graphics card has been messing up. Note I have formatted the HD prior to this occassion and every time its been fine. My main complaint is that now it wont even run things like playonline (I used to be an avid FFXI player). Basically, I've reinstalled DirectX and new drivers for my graphics card but it still wont work.

I spoke to playonline tech support and we went through my directxdiag to find the source of the problem. No real ideas there either. I know for a fact my graphics card chip type and DAC type shouldnt be n/a though. My graphics card was part of the pc when I bought it, so its always been plugged into the motherboard. Im not sure what to do!

I'll put my directxdiag here and if anyone can help me fix it that would be awesome:

Direct Diag
System Tab:
Operating system: Microsoft Windows ME (4.90, Build 3000)
Language: English
System Manufacturer: 00101920 7940
BIOS: Phoenix
Processor: AMD Athlon (tm) Processor, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.3GHz
Memory: 256MB RAM
Page File:102MB Used, 1690MB available
DirectX ver: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

DirectX Files Tab:
The notes say no problems found.

Display Tab:
Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip Type: N/A
DAC Type: N/A
Approx Total Memory: 32.0MB

Drivers:
Main Driver: nvdisp.drv
Version: 4.14.0001.4345 (English)
WHQL Logo'd: no
Mini VDD: nvmini.vxd
VDD: *vdd
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)

Directdraw. Direct 3d and AGP texture acceleration are all enabled.

Please help me ;_ ;

[Sploddess]

Okay well from the look of your specs it should be working, I am being told all of this by a family member who went to college for computers so yea. What my cousin is thinking is when you reformatted this last time it didn't wipe all of the old information away so he says reformatting it again may work. But from the sound of how you are explaining this he has your graphics card is fried. Which he said if it's a chip then thats typical for them to be fried from over heating or possibly from long time over extended use. Don't worry I fried mine the same way an it was doing the same thing as yours is doing. I was totally addicted to FFXI after that happened and I didn't have my comp for 3 weeks I just got the PS2 version and started over lol. So I'd try to reformat it again if I was you before you get your computer fixed.

[Xander]

I'm gonna move this to the Help forum, simply because I think you might get more help there. Hehe. xP

[Yamaneko]

That's a pretty weak system. Is it even possible to run the game with those specs? Anyway, have you been getting any error messages? Post them if you have. If your GPU had been fried you wouldn't be able to run under Windows for long. Either way open up your case and see that all your fans are spinning. Try new drivers from the Nvidia site and clean out old drivers with <a href="http://www.drivercleaner.net/">Driver Cleaner</a>. Without error messages, though, it's going to be hard to pinpoint the problem, if there is one. You should really look into upgrading at least your GPU and RAM. It would help a lot.

dxdiag might not be recognizing your card because it's so old. Does your card appear in the Device Manager under System Properties?

[crono_logical]

WindowsME, there's your problem Yeah, the newest drivers may not be the best for such an old card. What happenned to the drivers provided by the manufacturer, did you try those? Does the card "act funny" on a clean install of the system and the drivers being the first/only thing installed after Windows?

[Endless]

These prolly are the default nvidia drivers he had (4.14.0001.4345, aka 43.45), whereas mine, which are one version late, are 6.14.0010.6693 (aka 66.93) and the latest official are 71.89.
Try upgrading the nvidia drivers.

[Laguna]

The card came as part of the pc so the drivers that get installed are about 4 years old. I've tried upgrading the drivers so many times now (I had to do it once to play FFXI so it definately worked with new drivers). I've tried reformatting the system but no luck. Windows runs fine but it seems any game wants to crash right now.

[Endless]

Since your first post, did you actually install the newest drivers from nVidia? If so, could you post the drivers section of dxdiag?

[Laguna]

Updated my drivers to the newest version available.

New info:
Main Driver: nvdisp.drv
version: 4.14.0010.7184 (English)
Date: 24/2/2005
WHQL Logo'd: No
Mini VDD: nvmini.vxd
VDD: *vdd
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)