installing AGP card in a netvista 8305-42A desktop

[Linliel]

Hi guys,

I'm at my wits' end with this! I'm running Windows XP pro and have upgraded the power supply (from 185 to 300W) and put a NVIDIA 6600 GT into the AGP slot. It runs fine with the "default" VGA drivers, but I can't seem to get it to run the NVIDIA specific drivers.
Things I did already:

Update BIOS
Changed BIOS setting to use the AGP slot as the default video driver
Changed BIOS setting to have the right amount of memory being used by the card
Disabled a bunch of things I wasn't using (serial, parallel ports) to free up IRQs (if that's necessary, I just did it when things still weren't working)
Uninstalled and reinstalled the latest NVIDIA drivers about 50 million times

And it's still not working. The error I get is "This device cannot start. (Code 10)".

Argh! Anyway, any help greatly appreciated. I'm seriously tearing my hair out about this, lol >_<

[Kohan]

For starters, are you certain your computer is compatible with the card you're using? Do you fulfill the minimum requirements?

Where did the card come from? Was it new, or purchased used?

Likewise, where are the drivers coming from? Have you tried different versions?

Aside from that, have you attempted to install the drivers manually (by going into the card's properties via Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager)? Basically, if you right-click the video device and hit "Properties," then "Update Driver," you can point Windows toward the directory containing all your drivers' installation files, and see if it'll work then.

[Linliel]

Yup, done all that (the latter). I don't know if it's compatible, I can't seem to find a list. I don't see why it wouldn't be compatible though, the computer and card have similar vintages. The card is one that I've had working perfectly in my other desktop. I got the official latest drivers from the NVIDIA site, and also found some old drivers for NVIDIA cards from the Lenovo/IBM site but both come up with the same error.

All I can think of is that there's a particular incompatibility with this card or something, which is a shame! lol

[Kohan]

I am rather sure the graphics card will not work with your computer. Although I'm not 100% positive of this, I have looked up the information on your motherboard, and it has an Intel 845G chipset. These are known to have problems with fairly recent graphics cards, and considering that the 6600 GT is a scaled-down version of its PCI-E brother, that might be your exact problem.

What is the machine it came from? If that has a newer motherboard and/or different chipset, maybe that's why it worked there, but isn't here.

EDIT: Specifically, your motherboard's AGP port is 32-bit. The 6600 GT is a 128-bit card. Although 8x AGP cards normally have no problem running in a 4x slot, that isn't the only issue here. They're extremely different architectures. I believe there's a fair chance this is a permanent no-go.

[Linliel]

Thanks, much appreciated! Good to know to not bother more with it then I'll slap an old Geforce 2 in it and replace the MAME box we have instead!