64 replies to this topic

[Lee]

OK, I have touched on this in the main windows forum when building my better half's new PC but with at the time, a cheap and nasty old Intel CPU that I had laying about. So I blamed the (soon to be replaced) CPU. I'm not sure if this is the correct part of the WTT forum to place this (it may get moved). But hey, I've been a gamer for over 10yrs. and I'd like to throw some support to this new section, as the wife wants to run GTA 4 on W7 to take advantage of direct X 10 and 11 (she also has Dirt 2 and Fallout 3), not the Direct X 9c on XP. She has no problems running these games on XP. I have no problems with any of these games on W7, but I have an AMD, not Intel Rig. For PC building and upgrading, I work on a late adopter principal due to price. 2yrs old 'great' components then at 1/3 of original price for all those components now. JUST before these components become difficult to buy new. Her specs: MB: Gigabyte GA-EP4ST-UD3LR (revision 1.3 which took this MB from DDR2 to DDR3) Chipset: Intel P45 CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 @ 2666MHz (not overclocked) RAM: 4069Mb (2x 2048 DDR3 x 1333MHz) VC: NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT (not overclocked) OS: Dual boot XP Home / W7 Pro. Not a bad little mid-level gaming Rig considering the price I wacked it together for. Everything in the Rig is 100% compatible and new. The problem is that regardless of driver and trying it out with 3 different screens (including my own Samsung Syncmaster, on W7), I cannot get anything but 800 x 600 resolution in W7 and 16 bit colour. On XP there is no problem regardless of driver or screen. I have tried to solve the resolution problem on W7 with the latest display driver and several other earlier versions but to no effect, including the driver that came with the 9800GT card (Vista and W7 compatable). I just cannot get anything but 600x800 and 16 bit colour. As I am the Tech. dungeon keeper for all PC problems here at home, this is all my fault of course! This is a tough one for this new section, so any clues? Cheers, Lee

Edited by Lee, 02 November 2010 - 02:09 AM.

[Nahumi]

Hey Lee, Does the 9800GT come with a 6pin PCI-Express power connection on the top? Some of the vendors let it run directly from the PCI-E slot, but the originals required a direct power link from the PSU. Also, good luck trying to run GTA IV. I tried to run it on an AMD 4400+ with an XFX 9800GTX+ BE (the triple overclocked version of the regular 9800), and it still wouldn't run properly. I've heard that GTA IV needs a quad core to run properly, but to be honest, I think it's just a bad port from the Xbox 360. Fallout 4 and Dirt should run fine though, assuming that you can get the graphics card to work. Edit: Scrap that, I just found the previous topic and I've already suggested this... . Are all the power cables from the PSU connected to the motherboard?

Edited by Nahumi, 02 November 2010 - 03:59 AM.

[Lee]

Zoe's response:

I suppose this problem really is both a "can't change resolution - stuck on 800x600 and 16bit color in windows 7 but have no trouble in XP " which leads to.. "can't play games on windows 7 (due to this problem).

As I mentioned earlier, the problem still occurred with a slightly different 9800gt (the new green 1GB which connects through mobo) and different screens.

As everything is working okay in XP, then is it a Windows 7 problem ?

The VC reference above is my own card (Gainward 9800GT) and it made no difference using it on her PC. We have similar level PC's except mine is AMD. GTA 4 is up and running fine on her XP install. Creating an off-line account was a bit of a problem though. I don't like that 'games for windows' thing !

Her GeForce 9800GT (512mb) card has the 6 pin connector from the PSU.

This W7 resolution problem exists all the time, not just when trying to run a game. Everything is plugged in correctly and works perfectly except for the W7 resolution being stuck on 800x600.

Cheers,
Lee

Edited by Lee, 02 November 2010 - 03:11 PM.

[terry1966]

sounds like a driver/permissions problem to me..

will do a bit of googling and see if i can find anything.

i assume it's 64bit win7 pro?



ok not finding a lot, so think what i would do is find and download the latest driver for your card here:- http://www.nvidia.co..._9800gt_us.html

download driver sweeper from here :- http://www.guru3d.co.../driversweeper/

now un-install your card, run driver sweeper, then reboot and install the latest driver..

if your still having problems, next i might see what bios version you have and if there's a later one that might fix any compatibility issues with win7 64bit,

Edited by terry1966, 02 November 2010 - 03:49 PM.

[terry1966]

i did find something else to try, not the same problem as you, here :- http://social.techne...b1-e2866e143817

If it does not work on your issue, I'd suggest you installing the Vista driver in Compatibility mode. Remove and rescan that hardware device in Device Manager, right-click on the driver executable/installer file -> Properties and select the Compatibility tab; click the checkbox before Run this program in Compatibility mode for option and select Windows Vista in the list-down box; then try installing the device driver. In addition, you can use the Windows XP driver for testing.

full post reads

Hello Elegon,

First you might keep windows update regularly to obtain the latest driver for your device. Note: Drivers on the Windows Update site are directly provided by hardware manufacturers. Microsoft tests drivers in various environments before they are published; however, we cannot guarantee all drivers will work on all hardware platforms as there are too many different models, although their hardware ID are the same as the standard version. In some cases, due to hardware modifications by different manufacturers, the driver updates may cause some error.

If it does not work on your issue, I'd suggest you installing the Vista driver in Compatibility mode. Remove and rescan that hardware device in Device Manager, right-click on the driver executable/installer file -> Properties and select the Compatibility tab; click the checkbox before Run this program in Compatibility mode for option and select Windows Vista in the list-down box; then try installing the device driver. In addition, you can use the Windows XP driver for testing.

Meanwhile, please understand that Windows 7 is a new operating system and whole driverstore has been reprogrammed; you might push the device manufacturer to upgrade their driver. Thanks for your time and understanding!

For more details, please look at the first Sticky thread at the top of this forum.

What can I do if my hardware does not work?

This will give you some guidelines.

Good Luck!

Andy

Edited by terry1966, 02 November 2010 - 04:20 PM.

[Nahumi]

Okay, if the card has a 6pin power connector, it should have a light on the back. I mentioned that on the last topic I think. Anyway, is there a green light on the back, or is it red? If it's red then there is a problem with the power connector. If it's green, or there isn't one, then try doing something similar to the fix you did on your own machine, ie. a BIOS update. Is Device Manager showing the 9800 as fully functioning?

[Lee]

Thanks mate for the help. I'll get back to you in an hour or two on your recent posts as I have a few things I need to attend to at the moment. Cheers, Lee PS Edit: It's a W7 32 bit. OS, not 64.

Edited by Lee, 02 November 2010 - 05:31 PM.

[Lee]

Nahumi,
No there is not a connector problem with the Card and I've already installed the latest Bios, so no luck there.

terry1966,
I've been on the net reseaching this problem for the past week and have tried all sorts of things,including everything you mentioned in you posts.

The very latest W7 display driver installed from Nvidia and all W7 updates right up to this morning, as I'd just completed a fresh W7 re-install (just in case it would help).

Same old problem!

For a little more insight that might be useful, I've included some of Zoe's observations and notes:

After uninstalling the Nvidia driver (latest 260.99) and running driversweeper to remove all of the Nvidia business, I reboot.
Windows 7 loads its native driver for the display adaptor, then tells me to reboot.
Before I do this reboot I notice that I have a lot more options to choose from as to screen resolutions and color management. However. after this reboot, it goes back to the stuck 800x600 -16bit color.

Apparently Windows 7 doesnt give the user the option to load drivers and has also taken away other user control features and just does it ( wasnt that a NIKE slogan in the 90's ?!).

I did find somewhere....
"How to Stop Windows from Loading Native Drivers"

Start- Search- gpedit.msc
Click the file to open "Local Group Polcy Editor",
then Computer Configuration - Administration Templates - System -Device Installation.
Click on Subfolder "Device Installation Restrictions".On the left and on the right you will see the possible restrictions.
R/Click "Prevent Installation Of Devices not described by other policy settings" and edit this option.Set it to ENABLED.
Reboot.
Open goedit.msc again and revert the change so you will be able to install your driver.
--------
I suppose I could use this to stop the Windows Native Drivers from loading.
I have not tried this yet. Is this worth trying?

Someone familiar with gpedit .msc would be helpful ?
Thanks, Zoe

Anyone make heads or tails from that lot?

Cheers,
Lee

[terry1966]

yes the problem i think is with windows re-installing it's native drivers tell zoe to follow the advice to stop it loading those drivers and to run sweeper again then re-install the latest ones and i think you won't have that problem any more.

did find somewhere....
"How to Stop Windows from Loading Native Drivers"

Start- Search- gpedit.msc
Click the file to open "Local Group Polcy Editor",
then Computer Configuration - Administration Templates - System -Device Installation.
Click on Subfolder "Device Installation Restrictions".On the left and on the right you will see the possible restrictions.
R/Click "Prevent Installation Of Devices not described by other policy settings" and edit this option.Set it to ENABLED.
Reboot.
Open goedit.msc again and revert the change so you will be able to install your driver.
--------
I suppose I could use this to stop the Windows Native Drivers from loading.
I have not tried this yet. Is this worth trying?

and doug/admin pull your finger out and put a space between those quote tags, it's annoying me..

Edited by terry1966, 02 November 2010 - 11:29 PM.

[terry1966]

if it still doesn't work then i found this topic that says you might need to update the cards bios and not the motherboards or use an older driver, 178.24.

i'd try the one listed here first tho before going back as far as 178.24 :- http://windows7cente...dows-7-drivers/

anyway here's the link to full topic :- http://forums.nvidia...howtopic=172282

[Lee]

Thanks Terry, Zoe is going to try that (I think). She is the one big on gaming (me, well I'm still there, but winding down a bit in that area) and now this new section is here, I told her she should join WTT as really this is her thread, not mine. She is a bit of a Tech. head herself and cut her teeth on 98. Cheers, Lee.

Edited by Lee, 03 November 2010 - 12:56 AM.

[terry1966]

only games i play now are 5 minute flash games, so yes get her to join, i'm sure with her gaming experience she'll be able to answer lots of gaming questions that are bound to crop up here. just hope we can figure out what the problem is so she can get back to gaming..

[terry1966]

another thing to try if nothing else as worked up to now is to update all the motherboards chipset drivers, been reading that intels sound drivers caused problems with the display drivers somehow too.

[Lee]

Well she has just joined So I expect you will hear from her soon (thank goodness, as she has forgotten more than I know in this area). Cheers, Lee

Edited by Lee, 03 November 2010 - 01:20 AM.

[terry1966]

welcome zoe.. i forgot to mention this link too, that will stop win7 from updating drivers that are installed too,

i think that could be why you needed a second reboot.. which replaced the installed driver that gave you all the proper options. :- http://helpdeskgeek....device-drivers/