majikthise

In case anyone has any bright ideas:

I have a PIII 1.0GHz Windowx XP Home Dell Inspiron 8100 with an NVidia GForce4 440 Mobile 64MB video card. According to my System Information, my Driver Version is 6.13.10.2958. My BIOS is A15, which is up to date for my machine.
The driver works fine for Warcraft III and its expansion pack, as well as for Freedom Force.

But when I try to open Neverwinter Nights, there is serious lag, making it unplayable. When I try to open the toolset, I get an error message saying "Could not create 3D preview window. Please check that you are running the latest drivers for your video card. This program will now exit." And then it exits.

I used to have an ATI Radeon card, and NWN was fine with it, but it got fried this past winter, and I had to get it "replaced" with this NVidia card. I had a terrible time even trying to install the new drivers and had to call Dell tech support for a few hours, and we were able to get a driver to install from my original Dell CDs that came with my computer in January 2002.

I've tried to install new NVidia drivers from their website, specifically the 61.77 one, but the curious thing is that it doesn't seem to make any notable difference on my computer at all -- it's not even listed in "Add or Remove Programs".

Curiously, "Add or Remove Programs" does display an "ATI Display Driver", but clicking on this (to remove it) gives me the error message "Unable to uninstall older or non-ATI display drivers."

I've even gotten NVidia drivers specifically for my card from the Dell site (R58746), and the same thing happens as when I install the stuff from the NVidia site. (I don't know if this makes a difference, but this Dell driver is technically meant for a slightly newer machine than mine, the Inspiron 8200 instead of my 8100. And it is supposed to require a BIOS for that machine that I don't have for mine.)

I've disabled my antivirus programs during all of this. I don't use any download managers. I have the suspicion that I haven't really uninstalled my current drivers before trying to install the new ones, but there's nothing I can get rid of in "Add or Remove Programs".

Update: I've used the DriverCleaner utility that I found on this web site, and it cleaned out the remnants of my old ATI driver, but I still can't seem to install any new NVidia driver except the one that came with my Dell drivers CD from 2.5 years ago.

So -- what the heck am I supposed to do?

(And -- am I just blind, or is there no search feature on these forums or on the website in general?)

Thanks in advance for your help!

MIG-31

did you remove the cp and then cats... then this were the time to use driver cleaner in safe mode.

then install the dets.there is a little suspition you done this a little differently.

this is my way.

remove cp.then the drivers and reboot.
upon reboot enter safe mode.then use driver cleaner.reboot.
re-install both dx.9.0c and chipset drivers and reboot.
the install the dets.

try that again what i have just said.. if that don't work it looks like you may need to format and re-install os!!

as for a search option dependin on what theme your using top right hand side.

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majikthise

Thanks for the reply. I should have mentioned that I am a techno-idiot. I don't know how to remove the control panel, and I don't know what "cats" and "dets" are. I'll do a little research.

But yes when I used the driver cleaner I did things a little differently from its readme instructions, (1) because I couldn't figure out how to remove the control panel and (2) because the DriverCleaner program wasn't listed in Safe Mode.

MIG-31

cats or catalyst= name for ati drivers

Dets or detonators= old name for nvidia drivers. now called forceware.

control panel and driver are both removed from the add/remove option.

with ati drivers always remove the cp (control panel) first.

driver cleaner.... no desktop shortcut then.

if you did not follow the read me it can fux up your driver removals/installs.

looks as though you now have an increased the chances of a format/install of your os.

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majikthise

Thanks for the reply. Within "Add or Remove Programs" there is no option for the Control Panel. Unless it goes by some other name that I'm too ignorant to correlate to the Control Panel. How else can I remove the Control Panel besides from within "Add or Remove Programs"?

I suspect also that none of the drivers I've downloaded (from NVidia or from Dell) are appropriate for my machine and its BIOS. I was told that the standard NVidia drivers aren't compatible with laptops (61.77 doesn't list my driver as one for which it is appropriate), and the Dell site driver is meant for a slightly newer machine (Inspiron 8200 instead of 8100) and a different BIOS as well. How might I go about finding out if my suspicion is right, and if it is how might I acquire the proper driver?