As I'm sure you'll remember, my new video card was delivered last Thursday. I began the ordeal of installing it Friday. I know, your thinking "ordeal"? What ordeal?

It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, but it was, of course, my fault. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

I uninstalled the old drivers and did all the other preliminaries before installing.

First, I tried the latest certified driver from the leadtek.com.tw site. That didn't work out at all. NWN ran like I was on an old 286 PC. Several people told me they'd had problems with the new driver, so I didn't think much of it and began removing the driver and installing the one that came with my card.

After installing the driver that came with it, I knew something was still wrong. I checked several things, re-installed the driver(s) several times, both leadtek and generic nvidia, but nothing seemed to solve the problem.

I thought I'd go online to look for help, but guess what? I couldn't get online anymore :(

My friend works for Time Warner Cable, and after he go off work Friday, he came by to help. We couldn't figure out anything on the card, so he decided he would try to find out what was wrong with my TW RoadRunner cable connection. After running several tests, contacting the main RR people etc, testing the neighborhood connection, running the line directly from the pole outside to my modem/his test modem/a new modem we still couldn't figure it out. The lights were on, on my NIC card, but we finally decided to check the card itself.

It seems that the oversized Geforce card was almost resting on the NIC card, either overheating it or causing interference or both. I moved it to the open slot at the bottom of my machine to give the GF room.

After doing that, my RR connnection was back, and I was able to successfully install the driver that came with my card. I still wasn't able to get the newest driver to work, but after another day or two of playing around, I'm running the newest driver and feeling pretty stupid about the 6 hour installation process on Friday...lol.

It's actually a good thing I had the RR problem because the NIC card was almost completely covering the lower fan on the GF card, and I'd have probably burned it up. I still can't believe I didn't notice how tight the two cards were....

Thanks for everyone's help!

Animal, the newest driver didn't want to work, but I finally got it going. Not the nvidia generic driver, but the leadtek version.

The 250W power supply seems to be holding up great. No blue screens, crashes, etc.

I did order an additional 256mg ram though. I just couldn't resist continuing to build the "monster" ;)

There is a new(ish) Nvidia driver available. It's called 30. something if I remember correctly. I downloaded and installed and it seems to work fine with my 286meg Ti4200. There is also a beta driver on the site which may be where you had problems.

Anyway, good luck with the new hardware [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

Thanks Mouse!

Mine came with a 29something driver, the newer one I mentioned was the 30. The 30 is the one I'm running.

The leadtek site only lists the XP certified versions, but I did see the two betas (40 somethings) on the nvidia site. I wasn't nearly that brave...lol.

The main thing I've noticed about the card is that my previously silent computer isn't so quiet anymore. The fans on the card are audible immediately from boot which is no big deal, but before my machine was almost completely/totally silent.

The second thing is that the card, as expected, has raised the case tempurature. I used to be able to put my hand against the fan and feel the airflow as room temp, but now it's putting out warm air, so the case temp is up a few degrees.

Seeing Ziroc thread about his dead GF 4600 will certainly keep my checking inside my case ;)

[ 09-30-2002, 11:27 AM: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]

<font color="#ff33cc">LOL B-Man [img]smile.gif[/img] sounds like a typical geek weekend to me [img]smile.gif[/img]

Glad you got the space around that new vid card cleared out. That would have been ugly. Now that the Beast has bit ya and you have that memory on the way...once you install it, prepare for the powersupply to crap out ;) </font>

<font color="#ff33cc">I had my own adventure Friday night [img]smile.gif[/img] Rebuilt my secondary game rig with XP. Half way through the installation my floppy drive burned out...no biggie really since I wasnt booting from it.....however, the stupid machine kept locking up on boot at the "DMI POOL Verification" check....took me two days to find out that the flopy had fried and that it was hanging on the floppy seek. "DoH!"

What a beast this madness called geekdom be! </font>

[ 09-30-2002, 11:28 AM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

LOL, I know. Check out the heat complaints I added to the post above yours while you were posting.

I ready for the PS to be next, and I'll need new fan, and then a hemadermaperculator....