Recently, when the computer was starting up the signal light on the monitor quickly changed from green to yellow, and the screen remained black. When I connected the computer to another monitor, the same thing occurred (i.e., no signal was being sent to the monitor). Previously, the computer had shut down normally. Presumably, the video card is built-in to the motherboard as the card is not visible on opening the computer. If that’s the case, how may I check to see whether the problem lies with the video card? The computer is 2.5 years old and is a Compaq Presario with Windows 98. (more…)

I mainly use my system for games and find when I run Quake 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, etc… the frames occasionally freeze up for a second or two during the game. I have been told the graphics card has reached its full potential, and cannot handle any more data at this point. The card is a Palit GeForce2 400 MX. Should I upgrade to one of the GeForce3 Ti500 cards I keep hearing good things about, or is there a ‘less expensive’ alternative I could take to improve frame rates? The system is a Pentium 4 on a Intel 845WN motherboard with 256Mb of RAM running Windows XP. (more…)

The video driver for my system won’t install correctly. I have a Celeron 566 based on Protac M754 lmr motherboard and I run Windows 2000 Professional. This motherboard is a 4-in-1 type in that it has on-board sound card, video card, modem and network card. I use the supplied CD-ROM for the motherboard to install all the necessary drivers for the various devices. When I go through Device Manager and use this CD-ROM to try to install the recommended and detected video driver for nVidia Aladdin TNT 2, the installation stalls with the appearance of the message ‘The file ‘nv4_mini.sys’ on NVIDIA NT Driver Library Installation Disk 1 is needed’. I point Device Manager to the relevant folder and file but it keeps coming up with the message above. Previously the video driver was installed but it crashed after I tried to play a DVD on my PC. After rebooting, the screen was in disarray so I went into Enable VGA Mode in the Advanced Options Menu during the boot-up process and uninstalled the suspect video card. The computer then booted up normally but with only the basic VGA settings. I can’t play games or view graphics at the moment though I can use the PC for a basic workstation. Protac’s web site has some updates on the Protac M754 lmr BIOS but I haven’t found anything useful. A second, but less urgent, problem is when trying to install the SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet Adaptor, an error occurs during installation, where it cannot find a requested line in INF file. Any help would be appreciated. (more…)

Every time I try to run games my video card locks up. At first I thought this might have been an IRQ conflict with the sound card because my sound card being a3d takes up 3 IRQ slots. I tried first disabling my sound card then uninstalling it altogether but my video card still locked up. I have also downloaded the latest a3d and nVidia drivers without any luck. I am running a Pentium II 350mhz with Windows ME 64mb of ram, an nVidia TNT2 M64 video card, a Xitel Storm VX sound card, and a Abit BH6 motherboard. (more…)

Attempts to install a CD-ROM disc titled ‘How to do just about anything on a computer’ produces a message stating that this program requires a minimum of 800 x 600 pixels and the present setting is 640 x 480. When I try to increase the setting by sliding the resolution pointer along to the recommended setting, my screen goes blank and then a series of multicoloured lines appear. Is there a way that I can manage to increase the screen resolution? I am using Windows 95. (more…)