Question on reinstalling XP

[drothgery]

I gotcha, thanks. That would be what I have then.

It's funny, I'd always assumed the company drivers would be better than microsoft's. I didn't even know they put out their own 3D drivers.

IIRC, They don't. But the drivers on Windows Update/Microsoft Update are the last build that's been through testing at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WinHQL for short).

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Have you deleted or uninstalled the old drivers before installing the new drivers? Or did you just install the drivers over the old ones. If the later is the case you might want to try uninstalling the old drivers before installing the new ones.

I've been using Driver Cleaner between each switch, it clears out pretty much everything. It even scours the CAB files.

 

[ssampier]

Ok- I got a new computer a few months back, but it's been having a lot of trouble running games, and it's gotten pretty much unplayable recently (though other programs still work fine). I'm thinking about trying a clean Windows install before I start buying new hardware in the hope that it will get fixed.

However, all I have from my company is a restore disc, and not an actual XP disc. This is for XP home edition. My question is, should I format my hard drive before restoring, or do restore discs typically need a pre-existing version of windows to roll things back?

Generally speaking most restore discs is simply an "image". It does not "roll" anything back. Usually the system restore cd partitions the drive, formats the partition, and restores the image. Your data and Windows settings are good as gone.*

*Technically you can restore some or all of it since a format does not write over your data, but don't count on it.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Well, I've got my data backed up on a secondary drive, so that's not a problem. I just didn't know if formatting first would mess up the restore process. Since it seems like it'll format itself, I won't worry doing it beforehand.

I Googled around for some diagnostics last night and played around a little with PassMark. It came up with some video display errors, saying that there was corrupt video RAM. However, according to the programmers on the boards, the test is picky enough that a few corrupt video RAM errors are common. Which of course isn't really helpful in determining whether my video RAM is really bad or not.

I also searched on the error code that has been coming up on the BSOD, and found a tweak to change in boot.ini that supposedly causes the error in processors that are 64 bit compatible. I made the change, and it helped some, but I'm still got some program crashes, though they were crashes to desktop, I haven't seen BSOD again yet. So there's probably multiple things that are combining together to create these problems.

Later today I'm going to try the MS update drivers and also try some BIOS tweaks that I found on search. If those don't work, then it'll be time for the reinstall.

Thanks to everyone for their help so far!

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Update:

Windows Update didn't come up with any drivers, nor did the restore disc have anything that windows would recognize. I can't seem to find any download section on the microsoft site that doesn't involve their own software.

Can someone tell me where I should be looking for the MS drivers?

 

[Rackhir]

Update:

Windows Update didn't come up with any drivers, nor did the restore disc have anything that windows would recognize. I can't seem to find any download section on the microsoft site that doesn't involve their own software.

Can someone tell me where I should be looking for the MS drivers?

Have you tried switching out the video card with a different one to see if it is a hardware problem? If you don't have one check with a friend. Someone should have one you can borrow to test it out with.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Have you tried switching out the video card with a different one to see if it is a hardware problem? If you don't have one check with a friend. Someone should have one you can borrow to test it out with.

Thought about it, but I'd have to find someone with more or less the same card. Otherwise, I'd be installing new 3D drivers to go with it, and then there'd still be no telling if it was hardware or the drivers. It would verify whether or not it's a DirectX problem, I suppose...

 

[Rackhir]

Thought about it, but I'd have to find someone with more or less the same card. Otherwise, I'd be installing new 3D drivers to go with it, and then there'd still be no telling if it was hardware or the drivers. It would verify whether or not it's a DirectX problem, I suppose...

Actually, nVidia uses a unified driver, ie. same drivers for pretty much all of their cards. So as long as it was a not horribly old nVidia card you shouldn't need to install new drivers.

 

[reanjr]

Update:

Windows Update didn't come up with any drivers, nor did the restore disc have anything that windows would recognize. I can't seem to find any download section on the microsoft site that doesn't involve their own software.

Can someone tell me where I should be looking for the MS drivers?

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Once there - after it has scanned your machine - I think there are three update sections on the left: critical, software, and hardware. You want to click on hardware and see wwhat comes up.

You could also try uninstalling the video card driver and then restarting (or go to Add Hardware wizard) and letting the wizard search for drivers from Windows Update.

It's quite possible that MS does not have drivers for the card, especially if it is newer.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Update- the new drivers, plus the tweaks (adjusting memory settings and disabling Vsync) seem to have stabilized things. For instance, I could play Pirates for more than five minutes at a time. I think I'm going to let this ride for a while and see if it works before trying any other changes.

Thanks for everyone's help!

Side note- Pirates was my favorite game growing up, and I'm loving the updated version. It is my fond hope that, when I'm old and can barely leave the house, I'll still be able to play Pirates 2050 in a VR Carribean designed by Sid Meir's descendants.