installing new video card

[Bruce Jones]

Attempting to install a new video card, PCI-slot type, in
a system using Windows XP. The old card is an AGP-slot
type card, and the display adaptor according to device
manager is Nvidia Riva TNT2, and it works fine. That is
the only display adaptor shown under "Display Adaptors"
in Device Manager.

Ok, the issue: The install manual for the new PCI-slot
card says to uninstall the existing VGA driver using the
Add/Remove Icon in Control Panel, shutdown the computer,
remove the old card and install the new card. Now, there
is not an Add/Remove Icon in Control Panel that gives me
an option to uninstall the existing driver. There IS
however an uninstall driver option in Device Manager. If
I do this, there will not be a display adaptor left and
this has me concerned, because....

A while back I swapped the cards while the computer was
shutdown, thinking that when I restarted, Windows would
see the new card and start the Add New Hardware wizard.
That's actually what the new card's install instructions
wants, so that I can tell Windows to install
the "Standard PCI Graphics Adaptor Driver", and I quote.
But no, Windows did not do that, Windows boots up okay
but to a totally blank screen. I hear the
Windows "chime" or whatever that you hear when Windows
boots up, but nothing on the screen. So apparently
Windows isn't running a standard VGA driver like vga.sys
when it restarts with the new card in it. So I shut
down, put the old card back in and all is fine, just no
new card.

So, my question is.... is it safe to "Uninstall", using
Device Manager, the existing Nvidia display adaptor when
it's the only display adaptor in the list? Is there a
way to force Windows XP to install a Standard VGA adaptor
driver or Standard PCI Graphics Adaptor Driver so that I
have a video adaptor driver running when I boot up hoping
that Windows will see the new card?

Or, does anyone know what would be the best procedure to
follow here? I have the CDROM installation disk for the
new video card, but the instructions stress uninstalling
the old video adaptor driver first.

Thanks in advance.

Bruce Jones

 

[Jay S]

I'm no expert but I just installed my AGP card running XP
and here's what I was told to do, and it worked. I was
concerned about disabling my onboard video chip, but when
I installed the AGP card the onboard was disabled by
itself so I didn't have to go into BIOS. When I
restarted XP the display did come up with a standard VGA
driver so everything looked ok. I cancelled XP's attempt
to load drivers upon finding the new adapter, and ran the
CD to install the new drivers. Everything worked right.
Now, my BIOS has a setting for using the PCI or AGP
slot. If yours does, you will probably have to get into
BIOS at restart, make that change, then continue with the
restart to use the new PCI card. XP should be using the
standard VGA drivers at this point so you can then
continue to install your drivers. I was told to always
boot to SAFE mode when you want to uninstall previous
drivers with Add/Remove or Device Manager. Good luck.