[Mindy3333]

The saga continues. I have tested so many of those Nvidia drivers I am using 78 now. Why can't they make one driver to handle all their stuff, and if they have to make a new one it should cover everything that came before it. Anyway, no matter which driver I use, I'm still having the display problems. One of the suggestions says to use the Hardware Acceleration slider. I am unable to find this on my troubled system that has Nvidia GeForce4 440 G0. I have another laptop with Nvidia GeForce4 460 Go which is CURRENTLY working. For that system I am able to find the hardware acceleration slider easily: Start--> Control panel--> Appearance and Themes--> Display--> Settings--> Advanced--> (then there are 7 tabs ranging from General to Troubleshooter so I choose Troubleshooter) then Troubleshooter gives me the Hardware Acceleration slider. But on the troubled 440 system, when I get to the Settings tab and click Advanced, I see only the stuff that should be coming up on the General tab only there is no General tab or any other tab at this point. Also of note is that the first time I clicked Advanced on the troubled system I received the error below:

RUNDLL

An exception occurred while trying to run "C:\WINDOWS\system32\shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL
C:\WINDOWS\system32\desk.cpl ,@Settings"


OK

But after that first time of getting this error, subsequently whenever I click on Advanced I get no error, but also none of the normal tabs as I tried to illustrate above. I hope this is all clear. It's a very convoluted problem. Does anyone know what's going on? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

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For some reason, when I uninstall drivers and let it install the default VGA driver, it never stays. As soon as the balloon pops up to say that the VGA is installed, the other Nvidia drivers start installing themselves to replace the VGA ones. It's really weird.

Hi Mindy,

That's exactly what I tried to infer in my earlier post. Simply going through the uninstall routine and rebooting as part of that routine only appears to work for that session (and doesn't actually unload the driver !!). Further rebooting after a normal shutdown causes the system to reload as before. Uninstalling multiple times one after the other doesn't even get rid of the driver !

Try going through Device Manager as I said earlier. Right click on My Computer. Left Click on Manage. Double left click on Device Manager. Left Click on the '+' on Display Adapter. Right click on the listed Nvidia Driver. Select Disable and accept the procedures. You'll need to reboot and the bog-standard VGA driver will be loaded instead. Device Manager will now show the red cross against the Nvidia driver. Repeat the Disabling procedure for any other offending drivers.

It solved my problems. Here's hoping.

alfa.

Edited by alfaman, 17 August 2005 - 04:40 AM.

[alfaman]

For some reason, when I uninstall drivers and let it install the default VGA driver, it never stays. As soon as the balloon pops up to say that the VGA is installed, the other Nvidia drivers start installing themselves to replace the VGA ones. It's really weird.

Hi Mindy,

That's exactly what I tried to infer in my earlier post. Simply going through the uninstall routine and rebooting as part of that routine only appears to work for that session (and doesn't actually unload the driver !!). Further rebooting after a normal shutdown causes the system to reload as before. Uninstalling multiple times one after the other doesn't even get rid of the driver !

Try going through Device Manager as I said earlier. Right click on My Computer. Left Click on Manage. Double left click on Device Manager. Left Click on the '+' on Display Adapter. Right click on the listed Nvidia Driver. Select Disable and accept the procedures. You'll need to reboot and the bog-standard VGA driver will be loaded instead. Device Manager will now show the red cross against the Nvidia driver. Repeat the Disabling procedure for any other offending drivers.

It solved my problems. Here's hoping.

alfa.

Edited by alfaman, 17 August 2005 - 04:40 AM.

[MinerFan85]

Hello everyone. Well I just registered to these forums because I was in search of this problem. I recently purchased an HP Pavilion a574n and swapped the Nvidia 5200 with my Nvidia GeForce 6800GT and 400w antec PSU which were previously in an older HP and worked fine. I performed this swap this past saturday, 8/13/05, and had no problems. While configuring settings on a game on Tuesday 8/16/05 I received a black screen. I had to reboot and I too received the garbled plaid like desktop screen with no commands working. Windows restore would not work, I even performed a complete system restore because I did not have much data besides games to lose. Upon reinstalling the hardware and trying to adjust my settings I received the same problem. The only way to bypass is to go to safe mode and disable the display adapter and to reboot. This is the only way to boot into normal windows mode. The old card and PSU made no difference either. I have updated my BIOS, my chipset, and even tried different nVidia drivers and mettods of installing them and still no luck. I even tried installing drivers without installing the hardware and upon reboot the computer of course recognized the hardware and garbled the desktop screen on boot. All the boot up screens however are displayed fine, it's just the desktop that gets garbled. Occasionally when the desktop garbles up, the system will reboot. But this does not always occur. I spent the majority of Tuesday/Wednesday getting the runaround from HP techs and I'm running out of ideas. I noticed that most of the problems with this are on Laptops and I'm on a desktop but I'd really appreciate any feedback or suggestions people might have. Again I'm using the nVidia GeForce 6800gt and I have a Hyundai imagequest L90D+ monitor.

[mixima]

I'm not at all techy, and was working on a last minute grant application when my screen failed just as Mindy described it. So I was both freaked out and pissed off. I've not made any changes to my system recently, and do find it suspicious that this problem seems only to have begun only in the last month. I am fully firewalled, virus checked and spyware free.

I wondered if an automatic MS update might have been the problem, but system restores back to a month ago made no difference.

I use a Tosh Satellite 5100 501 laptop with the dreaded NVIDIA GeFOrce 4440 Go display adapter.

My experience this afternoon:

-installing the recommended driver from the Toshiba site (27.24) didn't work
-installing the recommended driver from Microsoft (74.?? ) didn't work
-Microsoft's link to the NVIDIA recommended driver (71.89) wouldn't install
-Widewell's suggestion of the 72.14 version, using a newer .inf file, left me with a black screen
-the only solution so far has been to disable the display adapter in device manager as alfa suggested. The problem with this is that moving the mouse causes some vertical lines of "interference", and the display itself seems slower to refresh.

However, I do at least have a functioning system again. I hope one of you experts will be able to come up with the answer soon- I'll watch this thread with intense interest.

Thanks to you all for helping to keep me (almost) sane this afternoon.

mixima

[alfaman]

Mixima,

Re: mouse. Are you using the laptop touchpad or an external normal-sized mouse ? If the latter, driver updates should be available for download. What does Device Manager report about your mouse ? Does all appear OK ? Can you tweak the settings ?

Re: display. Are you able to alter the properties of the display monitor, including the screen resolution but in particular, the refresh rate ? Again, access these settings through Device Manager. Either or both of these may help.

Good luck with the grant application.

alfa

[CJIS]

Weird I had the exact same problem and mine is now fixed. When I did a windows update it installed some NVidia drivers and then it messed everything up and it just looked horrible so i looked around and found that I had two different drivers installed so I uninstalled them both and then just rebooted and it fixed my problem.
Also have you got the latest drivers from this site:
NVIDIA DRIVERS

[mixima]

alfaman- thanks for your post.

The vertical lines are present in many windows, whether or not the mouse is passing over them. It seems to be particularly noticeable in images or graphics-hungry applications.

Both my touch-pad mouse and USB mouse seem to be OK, and their drivers working correctly. Changing display options doesn't seem to make any difference.

I have noticed two other problems since using the default driver: it's no longer possible to "hibernate" the system simply by closing the lid, and the "hibernate" option is no longer available from the Start- Shut Down menu. Also- when the driver ceased working, it wasn't possible to open "control panel" without the system hanging. No idea what this all adds up to.

But I wonder- could this be a hardware fault?

Thanks for your support-

M

[trizzytrish]

Hi Everyone,

I have some information about the NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go display adapter. This video card is known for failing, especially in Toshiba laptops. In Toshibas, the video card actually sits ontop of the CPU and heats up to very high temps. Unfortunately, over time, this causes the card to fail. At first it may seem like a driver issue, and after having the computer off for a little while (so that it can cool down) it will appeart to act all right again. However, as it reheats, it will continue to short out. Eventually the card will stop working.

Whatever you do, DO NOT reformat your harddrive or let someone tell you that you need to. This is completely a hardware issue that NVIDIA and Toshiba know about (even if their tech support seem oblivious). The down side is that NVIDIA stopped making and supporting this card because of this problem and now the only way to replace it is to order a card that has been refurbished. Unfortunately, they are on back order indefinitely.

You basically have two choices...(1) order a refurbished card, which may take 3-4 months (or longer) to come in, and once it is installed, it will eventually fail in the same way your original one did. or (2) buy a new laptop.

I wish I had better news for you, but I hope this helps someone and keeps them from reformatting their harddrive. Your harddrive is fine...your data is salvagable... DO NOT let someone tell you otherwise.

~trish

Edited by trizzytrish, 22 September 2005 - 06:23 AM.

[widewell]

Thanks trizzytrish. So its a lost cause with these cards? Did you go through this? Where did you find the information about them? Its a shame with these laptops, they are still really good, the screen resolution alone is worth keeping them for. How do you make sure that it is the card thats at fault?

I have a question .. why does the nvidia driver crash, but if we use the generic vga driver it doesn't?

[widewell]

Trish, if it is caused by overheating, wouldn't getting the laptop's internals cleaned help? For example http://www.hardwarea...opic/23605/?o=0

[trizzytrish]

First of all, my background: I'm a grad student, total geek, and fairly computer literate (i worked as a network engineer for 2 years before returning to school). anyway, i tend to be very wary of tech support as i am generally several steps ahead, and get aggravated by their lack of knowledge.

My NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go display adapter started giving me trouble last week. I went through the XP troubleshooter, updated drivers, updated bios, unistalled, reinstalled, and nothing i did seemed to work. (see Mindy3333, i was experiencing very similar things). I found this thread and began to troubleshoot based on suggestions above. Based on my troubleshooting, i came to the conclusion that it had to be a hardware issue, because nothing i tried worked. Finally, i called Toshiba support (my laptop, 5105-S701) is still under warranty. They told me to run a system recover; i told them to take a flying leap.

Luckily, i ignored their suggestion, did not reformat my hd, and took my problem to a great repair shop. Within 30 seconds of walking through the door, they were able to tell me the problem. They took one look at the laptop and said, "NVIDIA, right?" They explained that they have had several laptops (Satellite 5105 series) in with the same problem and it all stems from overheating the video card. The damage accumulates over time, so most of the computers coming in with cards that have completely failed are ~ 3 yrs old. They were able to show me the internals of a Satellite laptop and how the video card rests on the CPU forcing it to take the brunt of the heat output. They had several in for repair, but no ETA for the refurbished cards. They said it had been averaging 3-4 months to get a card in, and suggested that i consider buying a new laptop.

>> widewell wrote:
I have a question .. why does the nvidia driver crash, but if we use the generic vga driver it doesn't?
>>

Well, if it is purely a hardware issue, the vga driver shouldn't work. If you are able to get the vga driver to work, then chances are your card hasn't completely crapped out. In my experience, i could get my laptop to behave for 20-60 minutes and then it would crash again. at the time, i didn't equate the failure to how hot my computer was getting. Also, if NVIDIA is not going to support this card anymore, chances are there will not be appropriate NVIDIA driver updates for it.

>> widewell wrote:
Trish, if it is caused by overheating, wouldn't getting the laptop's internals cleaned help? For example http://www.hardwarea...opic/23605/?o=0
>>

If there hasn't been too much damage to the card, then this could help out a lot. it is not likely that cleaning the internals will recover the damage that has been done, but it could help your card last longer. I think that part of the reason my card lasted as long as it did is that i don't leave my computer on over night, and when it is on, i keep the fan running at all times. (i have a great fan utility on my laptop that lets me force the fan on)

~t

Edited by trizzytrish, 22 September 2005 - 09:08 AM.

[widewell]

Thanks for your help Trish. I finished my phd in Boston a few years ago too. Good luck with that.

I think if your card is functioning intermitently then cleaning it out might work for you too then. Hardware failure isn't like car failure, where the parts wear out over time. So if the external conditions can be restored, (assuming none of the components have actually burnt out, like the capacitors) then it might do the trick.

I am going to try and do it this weekend. This looks like reasonable instructions for how to do it:
http://www.short-med...eview.php?r=258

[trizzytrish]

Thanks for the suggestion widewell. Unfortunately, i can't open my laptop without voiding the warranty, so no internal cleanup for me. i will suggest that the service center do this for me. (i had it done once already about a year ago) since the shop was so convincing in their diagnosis and they were certain that if it hasn't completely died yet, it will soon (i've noticed that the crashes have gotten quicker and worse each time), i am going to opt for replacing the card. i don't want to risk trying to use the computer and losing valuable research. i was able to get all of my data off the hd and i have a couple of desktops that can pick up the slack so i can afford to wait. (plus, i can't afford a new comp anyway!!)

[Mindy3333]

You basically have two choices...(1) order a refurbished card, which may take 3-4 months (or longer) to come in, and once it is installed, it will eventually fail in the same way your original one did.  or (2) buy a new laptop. 


~trish

Thanks Trish! I have been using my other laptop which uses a 460 instead of 440. Would that eventually also have the same problem? Is there no other substitute card maybe from another company or anywhere that I can put in the 440's place or upgrade to? By the way, what program do you have that forces your fan? The fan you are referring to is the fan that can be heard inside the laptop, correct? Can the fan wear out or can it continue for the life of the laptop? Thank you so much for your help and for caring to contact me. This issue was driving me nuts.

[rainbowpants]

http://www.buzzard.m...oshiba/fan.html

It is conceivable, although unlikely, that the fan may become detatched or broken, but if you can hear it start up when you run the fan utility and it doesnt sound like its chewing glass, then its probably ok.