Direct3d problems

[Brett]

Suddenly couldn't play video games (Battlefield 1942,
WarHammer or Prince of Persia).
Battlefield opens to EA video blurb and hangs, video
freezes, audio stutters.
Warhammer and PoP simply stop at a black screen.
The screen also "zooms" in and out about 5 pixels when
new windows open or I go to new pages online.

I uninstalled the old NVidia drivers(BFG GeForce 5600
256MB card) and installed the latest drivers.
No change.
Updated to Direct X 9.0c.
No change.
Checked Direct X Diag.(did not run tests)
No problems found.
Discovered the fan on my video card was dead.
Replaced, no change.
Ran Direct X Diag again this time with tests.
Aha!
Direct 3D test locked up tight.
Direct Draw test was fine in the "small box" test, but
locked up tight in the "full screen" test.
Direct Sound was ok.

Obviously I've got problems with Direct3D/Direct Draw.
The question is how do I solve this problem?

I replaced the video card with a known good card(exact
same model).
Same problem so it wasn't the video card.

I'm running XP Pro with all the latest updates except
Service Pack 2(and no I'm not going to install it).
Video is set to 1200x1600 at 85Mhz refresh on a 21" Sony
G500.
Could the monitor be going bad?
Could this be my motherboard going bad?
And as far as I know all of my drivers are up to date.
This all started about 2 months ago and as far as I can
recall didn't involve any new hardware/software changes.
I'd been running that card for well over a year now.

Is it possible to extract and overwrite the Direct 3d
files from my XP disk?
And if so, how would I go about doing that?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Brett

 

[GB]

With Nvidia drivers there is a procedure to follow in order to
completely remove every trace of old drivers from the system and
registry. The add remove programs does little to remove these. I have
an ATI card, but always had Nvidia and had similar trouble.
I actually went into the Ubisoft forums and found the utility

here are some links:

http://www.coolercases.co.uk/nvidia_drivers.htm

http://www.etplanet.com/download/ati_nvidia.shtm

Hope this is of help

GB

 

[frodo]

run the DXDIAG.exe program again, and this time run the tests!