Help with elsa Gladiac 920???

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

I went and bit the bullet, and bought a GForce 3 card - the Elsa Gladiac 920. Well, when I tried to install their drivers (wanted to see what their tool tabs looked like), it looked to have installed, but at the end I get an error saying "an error occurind during installation of the device - the data is invalid". And it says this for the "Video Controller (VGA compatible)".

 

NOTHING seems to work, no matter what I try. Even the NV 12.81 install fails with the same error message. I tried going into safe mode, tried in VGA mode, everything - and still get the same error every time. In frustration, I went and put my Leadtech Winfast 2 GTS back in - and now THAT TOO gets the same error.

 

Any ideas????

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

If it does try to install the Elsa drivers from the CD, it keeps wanting to install the NT40 drivers! And I even reinstalled SP2 to make sure.

 

Seeing as I had to put my cat to sleep yesterday, after 15 years together, this is EXTREMELY frustrating, when life is bleak enough already

[Donald2B 0]

Try this:

 

*Download a version of nVidia drivers in a zip file.

*Unzip to folder

*Go into your VGA adapter properties dialogue.

*Select either reinstall driver or update driver

*Check the display a list of the known drivers for this device.

*Then check the have disk button

 

From here you just browse to the folder where you unzipped the files to and see if this works. I know that I have had a couple of machines do this to me and this was the only way to get the video card drivers to work. Happened with a GeForce2 Pro and a GeForce 3.

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

I tried that numerous times. And when I go to "have disk", even though I have selected a number of different drivers I have in folders, when the "choose driver" dialog box opens up, it does not show any driver at all. It is blank.

 

I do remember, that in Win9X there were 2 files that you had to delete to get Win to recycle itself to rescan the INF files. Is there something like that in Win2000? Cause it keeps saying its in VGA Compatible mode, and every install fails with the same message - the data is invalid. Or, . . . perhaps the registry got tweaked?

[JP- 0]

Do what donald said but instead of saying have disk, select the option where it searches for a driver and tick the 'specify loaction' box and put in the directory where you extracted the files to. It should find them then.

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

Did that many times too. And it selects the Elsa Gladiac 920, and will install from the CD, and still give the same error. Something got hosed somewhere.

 

The only thing that I maybe did wrong, was that with the Leadtech GF2 GTS card in, I had the Det 21.81 drivers installed, and did not remove them. From what happened in Win9X in the past, as long as it was another NVidia card, it worked fine - just added the new properties that were now available. Guess Win2K is still not enough like 9X I guess. So somewhere, either the INF for VGA is corrupt (and I can NOT find it as a selection in video drivers like you can in Win9X???), or somewhere an INF file is bad, or a pointer in the registry is bad???

[Donald2B 0]

hmmm....

 

This is a stumper.

 

How about trying to uninstall the video card from the device manager and then rebooting and selecting specific drivers when it asks?

 

Or doing the above only through safe mode. Sometimes it makes a difference sometimes it doesn't.

 

Make sure that there is nothing lodged in your agp slot keeping the video card from fully seating into the slot.

 

Worst case scenario go and get some drivers from nVidia and not leaked drivers and then reinstall windows. Almost always all the suggestions here have solved most of my problems. The fact that this is still persisting is a little strange.

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

LUCKILY I have a genuine Intel D815EEA motherboard. And it just so happens to have an i82815 onboard video chip. I installed the drivers, removed the Elsa, and I am back to 1280X1025 16bit color!

 

So, . . . . . I am going to try a few more things now, perhaps somehow one of the NVidia INF files got tweaked and keeps screwing up the install??????

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

Damn it all! Nothing is working right now. Took me awhile to get my internet back up too! At least the onboard video works, but nothing I try will get ANY NVidia card to work again. Anybody have an idea? What would happen if I reinstall Win2K on my system? Will it keep all my drivers and settings, or will it think its a new install and wipe everytying out?

[FrogMaster 0]

Try this:

- delete all nv*.inf and nv*.pnf files in inf folder

- look for files named oem*.inf

- open each oem file with notepad and check whether they are nvidia related. If yes, then delete the file with its associated *.pnf.

You may find a number of those oem files. Only delete all those nvidia related. Not the other ones as they are drivers for some other stuff you may have installed.

Hope this will help

[Donald2B 0]

If what frogmaster said doesn't work for you. The only option might be to wipe out your 2ooo install and reinstall it fresh. That way there will be NO drivers to get conflicted with. Other than that I am stumped along with you.

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

Did delete all NV related INF files - no joy. But I wonder if some of those cryptic {52525-8jfjwe093jpowerf-05234-jt} entries in the registry points to specific INF files, and thus need to delete those two so as to regen the INF entries? As I said, in WIN9X there were 2 files that you could delete to have the hardware manager rescan itself. I wonder if that is in Win2K as well???

 

And NOW, . . . since I had this problem, my Intel D815EEA mobo keeps asking to press F1 to continue booting! Never had that before, and can not find where it is set in the BIOS. I even found a new BIOS update from P10 to P11, installed it, but still the F1 resume message! UGH!!!!!!!

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

When I went to the built-in Intel video drivers, they installed without a problem! But ONLY the NVidia, and I mean ANY NVidia drivers will not install. So there MUST be something somewhere that is messing with the NV install . . . reg, inf, ini . . . .

[FrogMaster 0]

uh ...

sorry if this sounds stupid ... did you deactivate the onboard video?

Sorry if I am out of topic.

[Powermike 0]

Good Idea, Frog! :-)

 

Powermike

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

The Intel D815EEA automatically deactivates the onboard video when you plug in an AGP video card. So no, sadly, that is not the problem. Win2K does recognize that an Elsa Gladiac 920 is indeed stuk in the AGP slot, but somehwere there is corrupt info in an INF or Reg file that is causing my problem. At least that is what I feel may be wrong. And if there was a way to refresh the INF folder to whatever pointers there might be in the registry, then that might solve my problem.

 

Of course, it could be that my AGP slot is bad? I'll have to try and see if I have any other brand AGP card around. But so far, if its an NVidia card, its a no go.

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

Ok, the F1 to resume error MUST have something to do with my Maxtor 40 GIG drive! Cause I went and bought a 80 GIG IBM drive, and test installed a fresh Win2K on it - and without the Maxtor connected, I no longer get the F! error message from the BIOS. ALSO, . . . I WAS able to install the Gladiac with no problem, so it is not the card or the AGP slot.

 

So . . . . either something in the registry is tweaked (and I TRIED to import in a couple of reg files from the good fresh install, but that didn't help either),

 

Or some INF files are bad (but I also copied the ones the fresh install for the video card used, no help)

 

Or there is some pointers to specific named INF files (not sure, and didn't look yet) that the INF files are now out of order due to my tweaking

 

Or some SYS or DLL file is corrupt

 

 

Just in case maybe its the hard drive doing this cuase of the "F1 to resume" error, I will try to ghost the image over to the new IBM and try it that way . . .

[FrogMaster 0]

Powermike ... well ... are you Powermike, if you see what I mean?

[Mike Zamarocy 1]

Well, never could figure out what was the problem. But the F1 to resume error does have something to do with the Maxtor drive, for when I stuck in the new IBM 80 GIG and removed the Maxtor, no problems. Well, I am now rebuilding the system . . . and I even went to full ATAPI, so if anyone wants some SCSI stuff . . .

[Powermike 0]

Quote:

Powermike ... well ... are you Powermike, if you see what I mean?

Yes, it's me, Frog! Sorry, didn't look into this forums since last week...

Powermike