i wonder if any can help me, i will try to be precise in describing my prob :

i installed the latest nvidia Detonator drivers for my pc at work for WIN98SE OS (pc has a GeForce4 MX 440) version 45.23 and all works fine and dandy .....

now to save time downloading it again at home i put the driver on a cd, went home and installed it on my machine at home, FORGETTING the fact that MY home pc has XP Pro !!!! the driver installed witohut any probs, apart from the disabled AV message, and promted m to restart ....

pc restarted ok but as soon as the desktop appeared i noticed problems :

Taskbar was BLACK and text could not be read ...

When pressing Start button all menus come black too and are unreadable unless i hover mouse pointer over them ...

certain Taskbar items were corrupted such as the 'blue circle' that hides unused programmes left to the clock.

i tried to 'fix' the prob by going to Themes and changed it to Windows Classic - ALL seemed fine, nothing corrupted, apart from the desktop looking exactly like 98/2000 ... changed it back to Windows XP Theme and all corrupted.

so my next bet was to uninistall drivers and re-install ... same!

next i tried to use System Restore, tried at least 5 restore points going back one at a time and Windows told me it could not be done and nothing was changed...

i tried downloading more different themes for XP, they installed ok and appear in the Themes but are corrupted too when i activate them - so back to Windows Classic ...

then i d/l Detonator Destroyer (says it only for 95/98/Me) - ran it and it said it did not find any nvidia cards .. :rolleyes:

i really dont know what to do to get it back ...

options i can try but have no idea what effect they will have are :

try to use the 'repair' function of the Win XP Pro cd ?

try to totally re-install XP Pro ?

manually remove every trace of the nvidia drivers ? (i dont know how anyway!)

help appreciated :blackeye:

my system :

AMD Athlon 2000+
MSI 745 Ultra SiS chip
512 DDR 2700
MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 128Mb
WD 80Gb hdd 7200rpm
Creative 5.1 Live Digital

have u tried installing the correct xp drivers?

I would think if you installed the WinXP drivers over the 98 drivers it would fix the prob, however if it didnt just do a system restore

Yes, you'll need to go to the NVIDIA website and download the Windows XP driver set after uninstalling your current, incorrect drivers.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_45.23

agissi : tried Restore 5 times like i said

dusthazard : i did that also used Detonater R.I.P. ....

it said it deleted all even the registry entries so i presume its nothing to do with the nvidia driver anymore but something corrupted in Windows ... probably in the Profiles dunno ...

i will re-install XP maybe one day - inthe meantime desktop looks like 98 but all works fine.

i give up :monkey:

thanks for trying guys :giddy:

I concur, and want to stress REMOVING the other drivers first. You never install drivers over another version of themselves. Always remove the ones you are replacing first. Doing otherwise is asking for trouble.


Just thought of something completely stupid you might want to look at. I didn't think of it before because it was so simple. What is the color depth of your desktop set at? Look in desktop properties and click on the settings tab. Should have a slider for resolution, and a drop box to choose color depth. What is it set for?

You can also try running the system filechecker to restore you system files back to the originals (Start>Run>type "sfc /scannow"). Have your winxp cd in the drive when you do this.

Stormbringer my resolution was set to 1024 x 768 / 32-bit color before i installed the 98 drivers :blush: ..... but the funny thing is that even after i uninstalled them, and even after i ran Detonator R.I.P. that said there are no nvidia traces left i STILL could use 32-bit color and adjust res to the max the Ti4200 / Relisys 770TF 17" monitor allows.

Nic , i will try that

SNGX : i didi not do the rollback driver even though i knew about since my reasoning was it will roll back once, and since by the time i thought of it i had already tried to uninstall and re-install the proper 45.23 2000/XP drivers i have a feeling it wont work properly ..... dunno how / where / which driver it rolls back too.

thanks guys keep the ideas coming in maybe we'll solve it.

I've had this before on an Intel D865GBEFL mobo at work, went from Me-->XP and the systoms were exactly the same, it didnt update the vga drivers so i had to rebuild XP from scratch, not really the answer you're looking for....but it solved my problem.

:\

use driver cleaner 1.9 to remove the driver then install the latest Nvidia ones for XP.

http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/