I’m running a PII 333 with 8.4 Gig HDD, 128 Meg of RAM, 8Meg AGP video card and an 8 Meg Diamond Monster 2 3D card, on WIN98. Almost every second time I restart Windows I can’t access display properties, and my Voodoo2 isn’t detected. I haven’t added any after purchase hardware, except for a PCI Network Card, and as the problem predated this installation. Could this be a drivers error, windows error, or a Direct X conflict?

This is probably a driver or physical hardware error. Firstly, I suggest that you check that your video card hasn’t accidentally fallen out of the expansion slot in your computer. I have seen this happen before. If the video card is firmly in its slot then I suggest that, when you are able to boot up and your computer detects your video card, go to the ‘Control Panel’ > ‘Display’ properties. Click the ‘Settings’ tab, click the ‘Advanced’ button, and then click the ‘Performance’ tab. This problem may be caused by ‘Hardware Acceleration’. Move the slider down to ‘None’. Although this may seem extreme, if your computer does boot up ok after this you can gradually move it up and see how far it can go without causing your computer to not detect your video card. Restart your computer and if it boots up fine then you have found the cause of the problem. If it still doesn’t boot up normally, move ‘Hardware Acceleration’ back to where it was. A third avenue of hope would be to download the updated drivers for the video card off the internet. Go to your manufacturer’s website where you should find a link to download the latest drivers. My final suggestion for when all else fails is to contact the manufacturer’s of your video card via email and ask them for advice. Before you do this I suggest you check out the FAQ’s and manuals on the manufacturer’s site on the internet.