When I bought my computer (discount at a supermarket, that was my first mistake), it came with the wrong video drivers installed. It took me roughly a year to figure out that all the fatal exceptions I was getting were due to my video card being run with the wrong drivers. Of course, Windows had no clue they were wrong - once a certain set of drivers is installed on a card, Windows just assumes the appropriate card is what you have.
The card originally came with a driver for an Nvidia Riva TNT2 Pro installed. That driver causes serious problems (as in at least one fatal exception and forced reboot a day). I've managed to stop the crashes from occuring by installing a generic TNT driver, but obviously, this one is not quite as powerful as a specialized driver would be. I'm missing out on many special effects now which the previous driver did give, despite its instability.
I assume that if I can figure out what kind of video card I *do* have (obviously it wasn't a Riva TNT2 Pro), I should be able to get an appropriate driver and combine the best aspects of the two drivers I have now - the stability of the generic driver and the performance of a specialized one.
The question is, then, how would I go about identifying my video card? I've found Windows cannot do it for me - if I take off the current driver, Windows mentions on its next boot that it has found new hardware, but cannot identify the kind of video card (it just asks me to come up with a good driver). Opening the computer didn't help much either - I can see the card just fine, but there isn't any description on it. The supermarket obviously cannot help me at all. (Remind me to buy from a *real* vendor next time.)
Does anybody know what I could do to identify my video card? Is there, for instance, a piece of software that could do this?
Thanks in advance for any input!
P.S. Should it make a difference, I am running Windows 98 SE.
"Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me."
(Lee Wilson Dodd)
The card originally came with a driver for an Nvidia Riva TNT2 Pro installed. That driver causes serious problems (as in at least one fatal exception and forced reboot a day). I've managed to stop the crashes from occuring by installing a generic TNT driver, but obviously, this one is not quite as powerful as a specialized driver would be. I'm missing out on many special effects now which the previous driver did give, despite its instability.
I assume that if I can figure out what kind of video card I *do* have (obviously it wasn't a Riva TNT2 Pro), I should be able to get an appropriate driver and combine the best aspects of the two drivers I have now - the stability of the generic driver and the performance of a specialized one.
The question is, then, how would I go about identifying my video card? I've found Windows cannot do it for me - if I take off the current driver, Windows mentions on its next boot that it has found new hardware, but cannot identify the kind of video card (it just asks me to come up with a good driver). Opening the computer didn't help much either - I can see the card just fine, but there isn't any description on it. The supermarket obviously cannot help me at all. (Remind me to buy from a *real* vendor next time.)
Does anybody know what I could do to identify my video card? Is there, for instance, a piece of software that could do this?
Thanks in advance for any input!
P.S. Should it make a difference, I am running Windows 98 SE.
"Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me."
(Lee Wilson Dodd)