Win95a + nvidia

[chromatic47]

System: Windows 95a, nvidia GeForce2 MX 400

Is there a best nvidia driver version for Windows 95 SP1 and a GeForce2 card?

I am trying early drivers on the theory that they would be more friendly to early Windows, but so far that has proven to be a bad theory. Several of the early drivers do work fine at the hardware level, giving sharp 1680x1050 and troublefree resolution changes, but the display properties extension and control panel applet are partly disfunctional. Clicking for instance on the nvidia Overlay tab in display properties causes the computer to lock up, but other tabs work okay. The system tray icon can be made to appear, but has no options menu. And depending on the driver version, the Win95 DirectX control panel applet produces invalid page faults in nvdd32.dll.

I have tried even the earliest version on their FTP site (ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/) which is 12.41, and also 21.81 through 28.32. If any of these drivers should be working, then methinks there is a problem in the OS files...

Any advice appreciated.

[luke.mccormick]

Call me stupid, but I don't think Windows 95 was designed to handle 20" Widescreen monitors, much less widescreen monitors in general. On top of that I doubt the newest drivers are going to play all that well with a 14 year old operating system...Dam I feel old.

[glocK_94]

Call me stupid, but I don't think Windows 95 was designed to handle 20" Widescreen monitors, much less widescreen monitors in general. On top of that I doubt the newest drivers are going to play all that well with a 14 year old operating system...Dam I feel old.

Well, Win98 wasn't supposed to run on widescreens neither but it doesn't prevent me to write this post from a 19" widescreen...

Anyway, Chromatic47, you've tried earliest drivers but maybe you should try more recent Forceware drivers. They're supposed to work on win95. I know Detonators are more efficient but you can still give it a try.

[chromatic47]

luke, Win95 handles widescreen fine on this machine. I change resolutions often, going back and forth from 1024x768 to 1440x900 to 1680x1050 with ease. The only problems are with the user interface.

glock_94, Thanks I am trying to save myself a lot of trial and error by this posting and get either a fix or a specific driver, but I may just have to keep auditioning. I will start with the high numbers this time. But I suspect that the UI while stated "Win95 compatible" is actually Win95 SP2/3 compatible, not SP1...

Edited November 4, 2008 by chromatic47

[sp193]

Well, did you apply the Common Controls update, or rather, all official updates for Win95? What is your DirectX version?

Also, some files like the win95 shell32.dll do not seem to support certain control panel extensions well (Like the win95 shell32.dll causing deskcp16.dll to cause errors in Kernel32.dll on a Win98 system), so you may not be able to access some control panel pages that are normally hidden(by the manufacturer) in Win95 but accessible in Win98.

And yes, Win95 should have no problem using widescreen monitors, unless your video card doesn't.

I only remember Win95(4.0.950) having an SP1 update(to 4.0.950a), and there wasn't a SP2/SP3.

There were, however, several OEM releases of win95 like Win95A(4.0.950A), Win95B(4.0.1111/4.0.1212), Win95C(1st version to have IE integrated), Win95D, Win95E(Very rare)

Edited November 5, 2008 by sp193

[BenoitRen]

What are these Win95 D and E versions you're talking about?

[chromatic47]

Well, did you apply the Common Controls update, or rather, all official updates for Win95? What is your DirectX version?

Also, some files like the win95 shell32.dll do not seem to support certain control panel extensions well (Like the win95 shell32.dll causing deskcp16.dll to cause errors in Kernel32.dll on a Win98 system), so you may not be able to access some control panel pages that are normally hidden(by the manufacturer) in Win95 but accessible in Win98.

Yeap all updates have been applied, along with DirectX 8.0a (the most recent compatible with Win95, as far as I know).

Also, my mistake, I think of "b" and "c" as SP's but that is not correct terminology.

I did discover one item of interest, Dependency Walker reveals that nvqtwk.dll (the systray icon dll of several early drivers) is linked to a missing export in user32.dll -- [ChangeDisplaySettingsExA]. Which probably explains why the tray icon just sits there with no resolution menu.

At any rate, it looks like I won't have to actually install any drivers I test -- I can just extract the UI dll's and run them through Dependency Walker first to see if they are total friends with Win95a.

btw thank you all for your replies. I don't know of any other forum to ask such a question and not have the solution presented as "Why the h*ll are you still using Windows 95a?!?" lol

Edited November 6, 2008 by chromatic47

[sp193]

Hey again,

Sorry for the late reply, I was busy.

Windows 95A(not 95a, OSR 1.0; 4.0.950A), B(OSR 2.0/2.1; 4.0.950B), C(OSR2.5; 4.0.950C), D(4.0.1111), E are all OEM releases. They are more rare, especially Windows 95D and Windows 95E, which were released to very few manufacturers(But they exist). They cannot be bought alone, but only with new hardware. 95B was the last version to NOT have IE integrated, and have USB support. I do not know the OSR level or build number for 95E, as it was extremely rare.

Well, I know that this is not very good news, but unless there is a very major update for Win95, I do not think that the control panel will work 100% correctly, because it's core is too outdated. It's still good for other programs, but I guess not for Nvidia software.....

You CAN try replacing user32 with a Win98 copy, but back up the original just in case of a system crash. May resolve your issue.

Nothing wrong using Win95, I would too if I had the choice, as it's a lot lighter and cleaner, but SOME programs really need certain components that Win95 cannot support totally.

Edited November 11, 2008 by sp193

[BenoitRen]

95C doesn't have IE4 integrated either. It's only integrated after the whole install process, at reboot, by running the IE4 installer. If you remove the CD-ROM after Windows installation, you'll never see it.

What did the D and E versions offer?

Edited November 11, 2008 by BenoitRen

[chromatic47]

You CAN try replacing user32 with a Win98 copy, but back up the original just in case of a system crash. May resolve your issue.

Nothing wrong using Win95, I would too if I had the choice, as it's a lot lighter and cleaner, but SOME programs really need certain components that Win95 cannot support totally.

Well I finally settled on driver version 28.32, which provides both widescreen and the main control panel functions (color correction, D3D, OpenGL) but not video overlay or the NView dual monitors or multiple desktops -- neither of which matters for this machine. The tray icon also will not function but I would never use that anyhow, since I use Multires to change resolutions.

The reason I still use Win95 on this machine is that the motherboard has ISA slots and one of my favorite sound modules -- the Roland RAP-10 -- is an ISA card. I could upgrade to Win98se but basically it would be more trouble than it's worth since the mobo has maximum memory capacity of 128 meg. So this box is essentially a dedicated MIDI controller, with Cakewalk Pro Audio 8 running just fine. I pipe the RAP-10 audio along with external synths through a mixer to another machine which has Win98se and P4 processor, 512 meg memory, and Cool Edit Pro. It's an efficient recording setup, since Win95 handles MIDI very well and is rock solid and fast.

Thanks again for your input, I will try the user32 substitution from sheer curiosity.

Edited November 11, 2008 by chromatic47