uninstalling video card

[LynnMar]

I am going to get a new video card and install it myself, I am tired of paying 50 or more to get them installed by a so called professional

well anyway here is my question first it says uninstall the old drivers, which I know how to do but then  it says

resetting current graphic card with windows


1. go to control panel display setting advanced adapter-change
2. click next to start hardware wizard
3. select "select from a list"  click next
4. select "show all hardware". "Standard VGA types  and 'standard VGA Adapter
 then click next
5. click "next" to continue installation and re_start PC/ if/when prompted.

so, what I need to know is do I do this after I uninstall the old drivers and before I take out the old card and install the new one or do I  run the wizard  after I put in the new card.     Very confused. 

I got  these instructions from the XFX  quick installation guide that came with my last video card.

[Theo]

Just uninstall the previous drivers using the Add/Remove Programs in control panel.

After uninstalling, you'll be prompted to restart Windows. You can click "Cancel" and shut down Windows instead.

With the machine shut off, swap the graphics cards - pop one out, slot the other in.

When Windows restarts, you'll be prompted by the system to look for drivers for the new card. Cancel all prompts (I think you have to choose the "No ,not this time" option or something).

Run the driver's setup program that came with the new card's CD. After installing, you'll have to restart Windows again.

[Hegelian]

Basically, you want to remove the old drivers using the Add/Remove Programs function in Control Panel. You do this with the old card installed. You then reboot, and when Windows attempts to reinstall the drivers cancel the operation—this causes Windows to load its built-in generic video drivers. Shut down again, unplug the PC (because most ATX motherboards continue to draw a small amount of power even when the PC is turned off), swap cards, and reboot.

Although Windows will allow you to install the new drivers using the Hardware Wizard, in most cases it is best to cancel this and then run the install utility from the driver CD (or the driver .exe if you've downloaded newer drivers from nVidia or ATI).

If you are uninstalling an nVidia board, chances are the uninstall routine will not clean out all the pieces of the driver set. This can cause problems. You may wish to run Driver Cleaner Pro after you've uninstalled the old drivers and before you install the new ones. You can find information about uninstalling nVidia drivers and a link to Driver Cleaner here: http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_4.html

If you want to be doubly sure, you can boot into Safe Mode before uninstalling the old drivers. Safe Mode uses the generic VGA drivers so the drivers for your old graphics board are not in use when you uninstall them. Note that Safe Mode runs at 640x480, so be prepared!   

To boot to Safe Mode, start your PC and immediately press the F8 key a bunch of times; you should eventually get the Windows boot menu. If Windows starts anyway, let it finish loading and then reboot and try again.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315222/

There is an easier way to do what the Quick Start guide you quote wants you to do (which is to switch to the generic drivers before uninstalling the board-specific drivers).
1.  Right-click on the My Computer icon.
2.  Choose Properties, and then the Hardware tab.
3.  Press the Device Manager button, then click on the + in the box next to Display Adapters to show the graphics board currently installed. If your graphics board can drive two monitors, then it will be listed twice.
4.  Right-click on the first adapter in the list; this starts the Hardware Update Wizard.
5.  On the first page, choose No not this time.
6.  On the next page, choose Install from a list or specific location.
7.  On the next page, choose Don't search. I will choose the driver to install.

8.  These next steps don't appear on the laptop on which I'm writing this, but basically on the next page you should have the option to show all hardware (you may need to uncheck a box labeled show compatible hardware). You should see two windows; the left pane lists manufacturers and the right pane lists display adapters from the selected manufacturer.
9.  Choose Microsoft as the manufacturer and Standard VGA adapter as the driver (if you have the option to choose Standard VGA Types in the manufacturer list, choose that instead of Microsoft).
10.  Complete the installation by clicking OK or Next (whatever is appropriate); if your board is listed twice, choose restart later if asked to reboot, and then repeat these steps for the second entry. When done, reboot the PC.

11. The standard VGA driver will be installed, but the new hardware wizard will want to reinstall the board-specific drivers; cancel that out. Now you can uninstall the board-specific drivers, shut down, install the new board etc. Personally, I find it easier to boot into safe mode and uninstall the old drivers that way.

Note that if your current board and the new board are both based on an ATI GPU and you are using the current or recent drivers, you don't really need to uninstall the driver. Instead, right-click on My  Computer, choose Properties and then the Hardware tab, and press the Device Manager button. You should now see a tree view of your hardware. Click the + in the box next to Display Adapters, right-click on each entry and delete it (if your current graphics board supports two monitors, there will be two entries for it). Now turn off (do not reboot) the PC, swap the boards, and reboot. Let the new hardware wizard install the drivers for the new board and you're good to go. This may not work for nVidia boards because of the incompatibilities between recent nVidia drivers and TS2, where you may need an older driver set for the game to run. With nVidia boards, it is probably best to completely clean out the old drivers using Driver Cleaner before installing the new board.

Remember to ground yourself on the PC case before touching any of the internal components; static electricity can fry the parts on a circuit board.

[LynnMar]

thanks everybody, so my basic understanding is that first I uninstall the current drivers while in safe mode and then instead of restarting I shut the p.c. down

unplug and swap out the cards and restart the pc and canel all the prompts, and install drivers from the c.d then go to NVIDIA to get the latest updated driver.   Is that right??

[Gwill]

That's right.
Be careful about static electricity when fiddling inside the computer.  Don't wear polyester or anything.

[Hegelian]

You may not want the most recent nVidia drivers; but if you wish to use them you don't even need to install the ones on the CD. Just download the current driver file from nVidia and run it. Actually, it's best not to install more recent drivers over older ones, so you'd end up just uninstalling the drivers from the CD before installing the downloaded ones, making installation from the CD an unnecessary step.   

But in any case, lots of folks are reporting that recent nVidia driver sets are not working well with TS2, and are using older drivers. nVidia supposedly has older drivers on its Web site somewhere, but I can't find them; however, you can find them here:
http://www.3dchipset.com/drivers/nvidia/official/index.php

(BTW, this is just one more example of nVidia's corporate mindset that leaves me determined never to buy an nVidia-based product, along with their chronically dodgy drivers and cavalier disregard for image quality.)

Anyway, if you search around MATY, you'll find that a lot of folks have had good success with the 77.77 drivers from August 2005. So, instead of installing the drivers on the CD, you would download this driver set and run it from your hard drive. Just search for "nVidia" and read a few of the threads; some folks are reporting OK results with 9-series drivers, although they still seem to have the occasional BSoD (blue screen of death), which is IMO unacceptable.

The one caveat is if you have a new GeForce model that isn't recognized by the older driver set. For example, the 77.77 drivers add support for the GeForce 7800 GT, so if your new board is from the 7900 series it may not be supported by that driver set. In that case you're kind of on your own. I would use the drivers on the CD and hope for the best.   

[LynnMar]

well, right now I am using 81.98 with my 5200 256MB card and it works great.  I tried to upgrade to the newest one the 91 something and it made my sims stick.   Somebody said I should turn down my accerlated graphics to get it work but I deceided not to and just stay with the one that was already working 

 I am going to be installing a 6800 512 card this time and I don't know if the 81.98 drivers will work with that card or not,  I could just delete them in the computer properties,advanced, hardware like you said and then try them with the new card. 
I will let you know how it goes, I won't be getting it for a couple more weeks but I wanted to be prepared and know how to do it before I got the card and made a mess installing it.    thanks again   

[Hegelian]

I might point out that few games currently available take advantage of the extra memory on boards with 512 MB of RAM—this is mostly a marketing ploy. TS2 is not one of those games.   

You don't say what model board you are looking at, or whether you need AGP or PCI-E, but as a general proposition you'd be better off with a higher-performance board with 256 MB of DDR3 RAM than with a 6800 with 512 MB of DDR2 RAM, especially if the 6800 uses a 128-bit rather than a 256-bit memory interface. This means looking at a 7000-series board if you want to stick with nVidia. Unfortunately, it looks like you need to go the 7800 series to get DDR3 and the 256-bit memory interface in an nVidia-based board, which puts you in the $200-300 range.

Frankly, nVidia isn't really competitive with ATI in the mid-level market segment, in either performance-per-dollar or image quality. Currently, the best value for dollar by far for PCI-E is Sapphire's Radeon X850 XT at $115 from Newegg—it has 16 pixel pipelines, which you're not going to find in an nVidia product for under $200. AGP choices are much more limited, but ATI's X800 series pretty much spanks the nVidia equivalent 6600 series and outperforms several of the 6800 models. The high-performance AGP market is drying up quickly, leaving the Radeon X800 GTO the best value currently available (256 MB DDR3 RAM and 12 pixel pipelines; some models, like the Sapphire model 100131L I have, can be "unlocked" to 16 pipes with a BIOS update). Sapphire's X800 GTO AGP is around $130 from Newegg.

FWIW, Tom's Hardware has just published a comparison review of PCI-E boards for under $200, and rates the Radeon X850 XT as the top choice unless you're going to be playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, in which case the X1800 GTO is the board of choice (and some of these can also be unlocked to 16 pipes).

Note that flashing the BIOS of your graphics board with a modified one or one for another board will void your warranty, and if you flash one with a GPU that isn't unlockable you may make it unusable. Therefore I don't actually recommend doing this although I have done it successfully myself. You can find more information here, here, and here.

[MxxPwr]

well, right now I am using 81.98 with my 5200 256MB card and it works great.  I tried to upgrade to the newest one the 91 something and it made my sims stick.   Somebody said I should turn down my accerlated graphics to get it work but I deceided not to and just stay with the one that was already working 

 I am going to be installing a 6800 512 card this time and I don't know if the 81.98 drivers will work with that card or not,  I could just delete them in the computer properties,advanced, hardware like you said and then try them with the new card. 
I will let you know how it goes, I won't be getting it for a couple more weeks but I wanted to be prepared and know how to do it before I got the card and made a mess installing it.    thanks again   

A system I helped repair with an ASUS N6800 512 AGP (NVidia) card works with the 91.31 drivers; which were the most current NVidia non-beta drivers I could find. But honestly, I can't say about the 81.98 drivers. This was an instance where the card came with 78.xx drivers, was on a machine that lost the motherboard, I dropped in a new ASUS P5P800SE (AGP) motherboard to use as much of the original equipment as possible (honestly, the only reason to buy a new AGP motherboard), and went straight to the 91.31 drivers.

Now, the 91.31 drivers do give that annoying SLI/single-card-mode pop-up message even with an AGP card, but all the apps/games worked, so he could live with the pop-up message. I figured I'd mentioned it, because it bothers some.

[LynnMar]

so you are saying that I can run Pets and all the other packs with only 256MB of vidio memory and that I should just go to a higher card?  I will take a look at the 7800 series and see what I can afford.

 I have an older computer, it has an Athlon XP processor and a M7VIP KT333 DDR motherboard base.
I am not very technical, so if I left something out that you were asking about my computer "just ask me again in real words and don't get all technical on me.   

  and as they say it in AA, keep it simple stupid, because I may need pictures.      


  I do know one thing I need an AGP card. and thanks again

[Hegelian]

I'm not happy saying this, but with your current CPU and motherboard, it does not make good financial sense to spend $200+ on a graphics board to run TS2. It's true that with a new board your game may look a little better, but your frame-rates won't improve much (if at all) because fundamentally TS2 is CPU-limited rather than graphics-board limited. What this means is that game performance depends mostly on how fast your CPU is.

With your current PC, I can't see spending more than the $130 for the Sapphire X800 GTO. The game will not take any noticeable advantage of 512 MB vs. 256 MB RAM—only a few current games such as Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 show any significant improvement in performance, and only at high resolutions (i.e., 1600x1200) and with anti-aliasing ("smooth edges") and anisotropic filtering (which TS2 does not use) set to high levels.

Beyond that, you're better off in the long run—and in the short run too—to save up and buy a whole new PC. I just priced this HP desktop—$599 shipped (after mail-in rebate):

HP Pavilion a1530e customizable Desktop PC
EW172AV#ABA

    * – Genuine Windows XP Home Edition
    * – AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3500+ (2.2GHz / 512KB L2 cache)
    * – 1GB DDR-400MHz dual channel SDRAM (2x512)
    * – 80GB 7200 rpm SATA Hard Drive
    * – 48x max. CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive (48x32x16x48x)
    * – 2 USB, 1 FireWire IEEE 1394, audio ports
    * – 3.5 in. 1.44MB Floppy Drive
    * – Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE
    * – Integrated 7.1 channel sound w/front audio ports
    * – High-speed 56K data/fax modem
    * – 10/100 Base-T Fast Ethernet interface
    * – HP Keyboard, HP Scroller Mouse
    * – Microsoft(R) Works 8.0/Money 2006/MSN Encarta Plus
    * – HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

A similar machine from Dell based on a 3.06 GHz P4 is a bit more, so this is a better deal. In either case, you would want to add a PCI-E graphics board at some time in the future, but these cost less than their AGP equivalents (you could get the Radeon X850XT for $115!).

If you shop carefully you can do a little better than this on a pre-configured PC from a good online retailer like Newegg; for example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16883107028

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16883109003

In both cases you would want to add a graphics board later, but the integrated graphics controllers will probably run TS2 better than what you're using now. I know that $500–600 is more than $250, but when you consider the difference between what you get spending $250 for an AGP graphics board for an aging PC and spending $550 on a new PC, the choice seems clear.   

These are both pretty nice machines for the money. The only drawback over the long haul (other than the rather cheap case) is that you might want to replace the power supply with something of better quality and higher output if you were to add a graphics board that required its own power connector, something like the Silencer 470 ATX from PC Power & Cooling, which includes a PCI-E graphics board connector.

[LynnMar]

yes, I think you are right.   I think I will just add another 512 stick of ram into my last empty slot. Giving me a gig and half.   And forget the graphics card and save up for a new computer, that is what my sister said too.   She said she would help me buy a new one.  But I don't want no 600 computer.   I want about an 1800  dollar one and since she is loaded I will probably get one too.   Thanks you have helped me a lot.       

[Hegelian]

No problem.   

[Orikes]

Is your sister adopting?

[MsMaria]

Yes, is she?

[LK]

Personally I wasn't aware you had to uninstall video cards when inserting a new one.  I've always just yanked out the old card and tossed it angelically in the trash.

[Hegelian]

These days the driver packs from the GPU manufacturers (ATI & nVidia) include drivers for all supported models, so if, for example, you are moving from an older nVidia board to a newer one, you can get away with that, usually, since the Windows new hardware wizard will replace the drivers for the old board with those for the new board. There is always the danger, though, of some bit of the old driver set being left behind and causing trouble with the new board, so it is always a good idea to uninstall the old drivers before installing the new board; and this is pretty much essential if changing GPU brands.

Also, it is a good idea to keep those old graphics boards for emergency use or troubleshooting. Ideally you would have both a PCI and an AGP board, and of course a PCI-E board if you have a recent motherboard that supports PCI-E.

[Sleepycat]

Also, it is a good idea to keep those old graphics boards for emergency use or troubleshooting.

yup it is a good idea! when the graphics card on my ancient computer died I popped the old original card back in and was good to go. Now that ancient computer (which always hated most games) is still running (it's about 6/7 years old now) and is taking care of my cousins computer needs(internet and solitaire) 

[Gwill]

Personally I wasn't aware you had to uninstall video cards when inserting a new one.  I've always just yanked out the old card and tossed it angelically in the trash.

That works if the drivers for the old one isn't interfering with the drivers of the new one.  And some computers can act a bit like sim ghosts and complain alot about not being able to find the card that is no longer there.