My neighbour called me today, said their system was borked or something. So I went over & saw that a network technician was working on it. He was installing cable broadband service on their system, however the neighbours called me over because the technican couldn't get the system to display properly.
I took a quick look at the desktop & saw that it was running at the lowest settings possible, 640x480 & at just 16 colors. This was Windows98 by the way. The technician explained to me that the system was borked, & that it really wasn't his job to make it work. He said he did try anyways & eventually gave up because the system just couldn't be fixed. He suggested a clean format & reinstall. He then left after setting up the account & making sure that the computer can access the net.
So I took over & ensured that everything was unloaded at the next reboot. And boy oh boy was there a lot that was being loaded. In total, about 30 different & completely unnecessary programs were loading up, everything you can think of, from spyware like Gator, to Dialer programs from sex sites, to basic crap like screensavers, desktop eye-candy, etc.. And on top of that, the config.sys & autoexec.bat files were also loading unnecessary things.
Once I cleared almost everything, the graphics card still would'nt display anything more than 640x480x16colors. So I went ahead & restarted in DOS mode & renamed the old Windows directory. I know I know, I should've reformatted, but they didn't have a secondary partition or drive to store backup files, & neither did I at that point, & it was also already pretty late at night, so I had no choice but to do this.
So I went ahead & installed Windows to a new directory, installed the latest NVidia drivers, installed the latest DirectX drivers & the thing worked, sorta. The colors went up to 256 (hurray), but after every 2-3 reboots, it would act up like it always did after restarting from a display adjustment. The screen would sometimes be blank, completely unresponsive to anything. It would also sometimes load alright, except that there would be a cursor at the upper-left hand corner of the screen (& I know it loads because I can hear the startup music).
I would've left it that way except for one thing, they didn't have drivers for their PCI cards, including for their network card. So internet access was impossible. It was at that point that I was extremely glad I simply renamed the old Windows directory instead of deleting it completely
.
So I apologized & left my neighbours with a working computer, with extremely fast internet access, but with a borked display.
I'm feeling kinda guilty for some reason. But anyway, what do you think could be wrong with that damn card? Overheating issues?
Thanks for any reaponses.
-----
I'm going to get you.
I took a quick look at the desktop & saw that it was running at the lowest settings possible, 640x480 & at just 16 colors. This was Windows98 by the way. The technician explained to me that the system was borked, & that it really wasn't his job to make it work. He said he did try anyways & eventually gave up because the system just couldn't be fixed. He suggested a clean format & reinstall. He then left after setting up the account & making sure that the computer can access the net.
So I took over & ensured that everything was unloaded at the next reboot. And boy oh boy was there a lot that was being loaded. In total, about 30 different & completely unnecessary programs were loading up, everything you can think of, from spyware like Gator, to Dialer programs from sex sites, to basic crap like screensavers, desktop eye-candy, etc.. And on top of that, the config.sys & autoexec.bat files were also loading unnecessary things.
Once I cleared almost everything, the graphics card still would'nt display anything more than 640x480x16colors. So I went ahead & restarted in DOS mode & renamed the old Windows directory. I know I know, I should've reformatted, but they didn't have a secondary partition or drive to store backup files, & neither did I at that point, & it was also already pretty late at night, so I had no choice but to do this.
So I went ahead & installed Windows to a new directory, installed the latest NVidia drivers, installed the latest DirectX drivers & the thing worked, sorta. The colors went up to 256 (hurray), but after every 2-3 reboots, it would act up like it always did after restarting from a display adjustment. The screen would sometimes be blank, completely unresponsive to anything. It would also sometimes load alright, except that there would be a cursor at the upper-left hand corner of the screen (& I know it loads because I can hear the startup music).
I would've left it that way except for one thing, they didn't have drivers for their PCI cards, including for their network card. So internet access was impossible. It was at that point that I was extremely glad I simply renamed the old Windows directory instead of deleting it completely
.So I apologized & left my neighbours with a working computer, with extremely fast internet access, but with a borked display.
I'm feeling kinda guilty for some reason. But anyway, what do you think could be wrong with that damn card? Overheating issues?
Thanks for any reaponses.
-----
I'm going to get you.
. And I don't think I'll try the card on another system either, that'll disadvantage both of us for pretty much the whole day 
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