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GeForce 256 Tweak Guide (Page 3/6)
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Posted: March 7, 2000
Written by: Dan "Tweak Monkey" Kennedy
Cleaning Out Old Drivers and Installing New Drivers
Start out by checking the video card manufacturer's web site for driver updates (e.g. Creative Labs). You can find the URL of your manufacturer's web site in the manual.
If the latest drivers are more than a couple of months old, we strongly recommend that you download the latest Nvidia reference drivers here, instead. We always recommend reference drivers because the core is usually the newest the best. However, sometimes manufacturers do put forth an extra effort to post new drivers and include special utilities. Also note that you may need the manufacturer's drivers to support extra features of your video card like TV-output.
The process that we recommend following to clean out old drivers is a long and somewhat complicated one, but it's worth it. When installing your drivers, it is best to do a proper install, which involves switching to a standard display type, purging your system of any old drivers, and installing the new drivers. Read and follow the steps carefully.
Step One
- Right click your desktop
- Choose Properties
- Choose Settings
- Choose Advanced
- Choose Adapter
- Click Change
Here you'll be presented with a couple of options. Choose to display a list of drivers. In the left pane, scroll all the way to the top and choose (Standard display types). Then, in the right pane, choose Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA). Follow the prompts, and reboot.
Step Two
The second step before installing the new drivers is making certain that there's no driver "residue" left behind from previous driver installs. If you're upgrading from a previous set of Nvidia reference drivers, do the following:
- Click the Start button and select Find, and then Files and Folders...
- Make sure the Find applet is set to search your C:\ drive and do a search for "nv*.*" - without the quotes
- Look for any files found in the C:\Windows\System and C:\Windows\Inf and C:\Windows\Help
- Select these files and delete them (do NOT empty them from the Recycle Bin until you know your upgrade has been a success)
- Exit the Find applet
- Click the Start button and select Run
- In the Run box, type regedit; this will open the Windows Registry Editor
- In the left-hand pane, navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation
- Right-click on the Nvidia Corporation key in the left-pane, select Delete, and click Yes to confirm the deletion
- Exit Regedit and hit the F5 key to refresh the registry
If you're upgrading to Nvidia reference drivers from a manufacturer's proprietary drivers, you have two options. The first option is using an uninstall utility that may or may not have come with your video card. If there is such a utility, you'll find it in the Add/Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. There may also be such a utility on the drivers CD that came with the card. If you have an uninstall applet, use it. If not, you'll have to take a different approach to "uninstalling" the old drivers. This is where System Info comes in. It's a handy little applet in Windows that displays information about installed components, drivers, resources, etc.. To use it, do the following:
- Click the Start button and select Run
- In the Run box, type msinfo32
- Once System Information opens, click on Components and then Display (in the left-hand pane)
In the right-hand pane, System Info will display a list of information about the display drivers that are CURRENTLY INSTALLED. Each file has a Company Name entry, which you need to pay attention to. If a file's Company Name is either Intel Corporation or Microsoft Corporation, forget that you ever saw it. As for the rest of the files listed, write down the name of each one. Do a Find for these files as outlined in step two (above), deleting each file as you go.
Next, from the System Information utility, select System Configuration Utility from the Tools menu, and select the Startup tab. Look through the list for anything related to your old drivers. For example, when removing Creative Labs' drivers, you may find something that refers to a "Blaster Control," such as bcontrol.exe or blasterc.exe. Uncheck these items, and close the utilities. (If you're prompted to restart, it is recommended that you do so.)
Step Three
Now to install the new drivers.... Make sure you have extracted the .zip containing the driver files to an easy-to-find location. Once you've done so:
(The following pertains only to Nvidia reference drivers, and may not work properly with non-Nvidia drivers.)
- Right-click the desktop and select Properties
- Click the Settings tab, and click the Advanced button
- Click the Adapter tab, and click the Change button
- Click Next, in the update Device Driver Wizard
- Select the radio button for Display a list of all the drivers in a specific location...
- Click the Next button and click the Have Disk button
- In the Install From Disk box, click the Browse button, and point Windows to where you extracted the new driver files
- Click Okay, then Okay again, and in the Select Device window, select GeForce 256.
- Click Okay, and then click Next
- Let Windows install the new drivers, and click Finish
- Click Okay, Apply, and Okay
- When prompted to restart your computer, do so
Super-7 /Athlon Registry Fix
Note - this tweak was changed completely since the article was posted. Thanks Chris for the info!
1. Install ANY Nvidia reference driver
2. Run Regedit (Start, run, regedit)
3. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\System
4. Create a new Binary value of 4 bytes
5. Name it Super7Compat
6. Change the value to 00 00 00 00 and it should fix some problems.
Alternatively, you can download and run this .reg file and run it, and choose Yes. This will perform steps 1-6 automatically.
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