[Solved] Matrox G200 VGA problem

[HardDriv'n]

Hello.

I'm attempting to setup an old "Matrox G200" (8MB) video card on a Pentium 3 PC, but I'm having a couple issues with the Windows 2000 installation.

Before I explain the problem this is what I've tried so far. This PC also has a WinXP, and Win98SE multi-boot install. I've installed the official drivers from the Matrox Legacy Drivers page "HERE".

When I plugged the PCI card into the slot, the PCI card auto-detect kicked in, immediately taking me to the boot select screen for my boot manager. So far so good.

When I loaded up Win98, it automatically installed the default VGA driver for it, and from there I ran the Matrox driver installation. I restarted, and everything was good. I went to load up WinXP, but it froze at the end of the loading process right before it would go to the desktop. I cold booted, pressed F8, loaded Windows in VGA mode, installed the XP drivers, and restarted successfully.

Finally, I tried the same procedure I used with WinXP in Win2K. Instead of the drivers installing correctly, the screen flashed, came back, and froze at the end of the loading process right before it would go to the desktop. The weird thing is I could hear the standard Windows startup sound play, but the screen stayed at the loading screen. Confused, I rebooted, and selected VGA mode. It started right up with the default VGA driver...

No matter how many times I install, uninstall, use safe mode to install, or VGA mode, it freezes at the end of the normal Windows load screen.

Any ideas?

[EDIT]

After much trial and error, I found that the onboard graphics kept re-enabling each reboot. I had to disable onboard video in the BIOS, and not uninstall the onboard video in the device manager, but disable it. After that I succesfully installed the drivers. Sorry, this was my first graphics card install here... All others I've used were pre-installed.

Edited June 17, 2010 by HardDriv'n