video problem

[Bearcat]

Hey all, A friend has a gateway and just upgraded his operating system to XP from 98SE. He has a Riva TNT 2 16 MB card and his color drops to 4 bit. When he uninstalls the driver and restarts it is fine and he can run any res or color depth. Upon a restart or shut down it goes back to 4 bit color. ( I didn't even know it could go that low) It seems to me it is loosing his XP driver and using the 98SE ones again for some reason. We tried to use the detinator drivers but same thing. It's fine until a restart then reverts back to the 4 bit color thing. I thought maybe XP didn't upgrade right and maybe a dirty install would help. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Lonman]

Upgrade installations can be such a pain in the butt. Tell him to format his drive and do a clean installation. As long as he has a qualifying product (his 98 cd), he won't have a problem... just boot to the XP cd, format and go for it.

 

[Bearcat]

driver prob

He can't format. It's his work computer and he has too much stuff to back up that his sec. only knows where it is. He doesn't want her to know about the problem. I can't figure out why it looses the driver every time he shuts down or restarts.

 

[Lonman]

I guess you can try the 'dirty install' and see if that will fix the problem for him (and her).

I don't know what else to suggest. Make sure he has the latest XP drivers from here, if he does already and they don't take then 😕 😕