Help/suggestions on video card

I have a older pentium 4 - 1.4 ghz with 128mb of ram and windows me running
on it. A couple of weeks ago the geforce video card I had in it went bad.
The fan on it went dead & i'm guessing then fried the card.
So right now I have a old monster fusion card in it. I know the
manufacturer diamond doesn't exist anymore. The best offical drivers I found
from them is a couple of years old.
The problem I am having is everytime I right click it locks up my machine.
It's really annoying. I've tried everything I and a few friends could think
of to fix the problem with no luck. I have removed all the nvidia drivers
and files I could find. I still don't know if something is making the
machine crash or if the drivers are just so old it's making my system crash
for some reason. I have to much stuff on the machine now to do a full
reinstal of windows just for a video card.
Anyway I was just thinking instead of spending whole weekends on this
problem just to buy a new video card from newegg.com. I was hoping somebody
could give a few suggestions on which brand to get.
I have a pci slot and 1 agp slot. The card doesn't need to be great I don't
use the machine for really anything super graphic related. I would like a
card that does support windows me (I have tried in the past to upgrade the
machine to windows xp but, that experiment failed lol) I know companies
won't have that recent of drivers for a card that does this. I just want
something that is stable.
I hope i've given enough info if not let me know. Thanks

warthog9 wrote:

> I have a older pentium 4 - 1.4 ghz with 128mb of ram and windows me
> running on it. A couple of weeks ago the geforce video card I had in it
> went bad. The fan on it went dead & i'm guessing then fried the card.
> So right now I have a old monster fusion card in it. I know the
> manufacturer diamond doesn't exist anymore. The best offical drivers I
> found from them is a couple of years old.
> The problem I am having is everytime I right click it locks up my
> machine.
> It's really annoying. I've tried everything I and a few friends could
> think of to fix the problem with no luck. I have removed all the nvidia
> drivers and files I could find. I still don't know if something is making
> the machine crash or if the drivers are just so old it's making my system
> crash for some reason. I have to much stuff on the machine now to do a
> full reinstal of windows just for a video card.
> Anyway I was just thinking instead of spending whole weekends on this
> problem just to buy a new video card from newegg.com. I was hoping
> somebody could give a few suggestions on which brand to get.
> I have a pci slot and 1 agp slot. The card doesn't need to be great I
> don't
> use the machine for really anything super graphic related. I would like a
> card that does support windows me (I have tried in the past to upgrade the
> machine to windows xp but, that experiment failed lol) I know companies
> won't have that recent of drivers for a card that does this. I just want
> something that is stable.
> I hope i've given enough info if not let me know. Thanks

Buy a mac mouse :)

Your best bet is yard sales and recycling centers. I've gotten nice cards at
yard sales as part of a $5 computer, however some of my best pulls have
been from recycling centers. Most have nice spots for computers, and they
don't mind you taking garbage :)

I got a 1999 Gateway Destination in the trash once! It had a 500mhz slot 1
processor, a 3dfx voodoo3 card, and a Memorex cd burner! It was rained on a
little, but all the parts worked! Look around, see what you can find!

poly-p man

On Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:24:42 -0400, "warthog9"
<warthog9@comcast.net> wrote:

>I have a older pentium 4 - 1.4 ghz with 128mb of ram and windows me running
>on it. A couple of weeks ago the geforce video card I had in it went bad.
>The fan on it went dead & i'm guessing then fried the card.
> So right now I have a old monster fusion card in it. I know the
>manufacturer diamond doesn't exist anymore. The best offical drivers I found
>from them is a couple of years old.

Did you completely uninstall the Geforce driver from
add/remove programs?


> The problem I am having is everytime I right click it locks up my machine.

It's probably a context menu entry that is now unresolved.

Use this utility to see the context items and try to discern
what it might be.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

If you disable the correct one, that should fix this. You
wouldn't necessarily need do anything else then, but if you
wanted to try and manually clean out the driver remnants
that are probably causing it, go ahead but proceed with
caution.


>It's really annoying. I've tried everything I and a few friends could think
>of to fix the problem with no luck. I have removed all the nvidia drivers
>and files I could find. I still don't know if something is making the
>machine crash or if the drivers are just so old it's making my system crash
>for some reason.

it might be the new driver instead of the old, or rarely
I've seen some malware that installs all kinds of crap
everywhere. While it seems to be a video driver, stranger
things have happened, it could be coincidence that this also
happened.


>I have to much stuff on the machine now to do a full
>reinstal of windows just for a video card.
> Anyway I was just thinking instead of spending whole weekends on this
>problem just to buy a new video card from newegg.com. I was hoping somebody
>could give a few suggestions on which brand to get.

Brand doesn't really matter much, I'd go for an AGP nVidia
card. Given the age of the system, maybe a Geforce4MX could
be found quite cheap used or at a surplus site, but new I'd
just buy the cheapest nVidia or ATI that suits your needs
for functions... perhaps you need S-Video in or out, or DVI,
or dual monitor support or no?

> I have a pci slot and 1 agp slot. The card doesn't need to be great I don't
>use the machine for really anything super graphic related. I would like a
>card that does support windows me (I have tried in the past to upgrade the
>machine to windows xp but, that experiment failed lol) I know companies
>won't have that recent of drivers for a card that does this. I just want
>something that is stable.
> I hope i've given enough info if not let me know. Thanks
>


The first thing to keep in mind is that you don't want to
use the driver provided by the manufacturer of the video
card, even with a more recent vintage card.

Go to the video chipset manufacturer to get the driver.
Don't install the driver that comes with a card at all,
ever. First driver to install should be the newer version
from chipset manufacturer, right after verifying (and
installing if necessary) the most recent DirectX version
which is 9c at this time.

Your Diamond card just happens to be an unusual case, being
a Voodoo card. There may be some better Voodoo drivers out
there somewhere but I haven't kept up with them in recent
years, a Google search might find some but I think the link
I gave above for context menu disabling should fix the
problem.

To more directly address your request for a new card,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121183

Benefits are that it's cheap, passively cooled (moderately
low power and heat), and has DVI connector too.

Detriments, far too slow for modern 3D gaming, not as many
features as some (for every extra $10-20 you can step up in
features or performance, but this should suffice for most
common 2D work, as the Voodoo card was).

The drivers for it or any other nVidia card are these, don't
even put the original CD that comes with it in the system,
there is no benefit to it.
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
menu- Graphics Driver, Geforce & TNT2