XP won't boot on Microsoft Display Driver

[gordo999]

I've had XP running fine for years on an Asus B360M mobo with both Intel USB and VIA USB on an external card. Suddenly it won't even get to the logon screen. It shows the XP welcome screen fine then just goes blank before the logon screen. I have an Nvidia GT1030 card but I could run fine in an SVGA mode which was OK with me. I did not notice till recently that the driver is called Microsoft Basic Display Driver.

Seems to me this is either a display driver issue or a User file issues. How would one go about creating new user file offline?

In my XP Device Manager the sisplay driver is not listed as such and under Properties it tells me no driver is required. But if I boot with Hiren's legit PE Windows  version their Device Manager list the driver correctly and lets me view it normally.

Last night, while messing with it, XP suddenly ran to the desktop and worked fine. I have no idea why.

If I try a Recovery Disk, it asks fr n Administrator password but it won't accept my normal password. Is there a way to reset the password offline?

[gordo999]

Update....I was exploring the problem last night when I heard a voice in my headphones nearby. When I checked it out, the voice was something related to Ease of Access kind of thing for people who are challenged for sight, hearing, etc. The voice was indicating which key was hit on the keyboard.

So, it seems XP has reached the desktop and I just don't have video. If I try to go into Safe Mode, it stop loading after AGP440.sys, a sure sign the video driver is the problem.

However, when I boot W10 on the same system, there is no problem. I guess the problem is the Nvidia GT1030 card but it used to tun in SVGA mode with the same card and it suddenly turned on the other night with XP.

[ED_Sln]

Try selecting "Enable VGA mode" from the F8 menu. Maybe some program changed the screen settings and they became incompatible with the base driver.

 

[gordo999]

On 5/3/2024 at 4:42 AM, ED_Sln said:

Try selecting "Enable VGA mode" from the F8 menu. Maybe some program changed the screen settings and they became incompatible with the base driver.

 

@ED_Sln ... Ed, thanks for reply. I did try the Enable VGA mode to no avail. Seems to me the problem is with the GT 1030 and an SVGA  driver that got put into my system which is incompatible.

Bit of history. At one time, I loaded the XP SP4 upgrade by Harkaz and several things started working better on my XP installation. I have a feeling there was an SVGA driver in the upgrade that worked with my GT 1030 and that driver was subsequently over-written by a later river from Msoft.

I  don't remember all the details. I have bigger problems at the moment. I was in BIOS tying to get the onboard graphics working and I may have turned on the iGPU feature. Somehow, I can no longer get a display during POST but it shows up later with W10, just before logon. I need to fix that first, hopefully by pulling the CMOS battery and resetting BIOS to default.

I know Nvidia went in a different direction with their 10xx series of video cards but I wonder how different the driver is from the 9xx series. I had the GT 1030 working fine in SVGA mode but now it is intermittent. I was fiddling with it one day and suddenly the display turned on again and at the desktop. Have no idea what I did but it seems another driver was interfering.

[66cats]

53 minutes ago, gordo999 said:

I wonder how different the driver is from the 9xx series.

Could force a 9xx driver (install from the device manager, 'let me choose,' etc.) & get 2D acceleration. Worked for me with 1050 & 1070 (also on 8th gen B chipset).

56 minutes ago, gordo999 said:

Somehow, I can no longer get a display during POST 

Plug the display into the motherboard FTW?

[gordo999]

On 5/4/2024 at 4:06 PM, 66cats said:

Could force a 9xx driver (install from the device manager, 'let me choose,' etc.) & get 2D acceleration. Worked for me with 1050 & 1070 (also on 8th gen B chipset).

Plug the display into the motherboard FTW?

@66cats...Good idea, I was thinking of modding the INF file with the 1030 card to see what would happen. It would be better to compare drivers to see what has changed.

I tried plugging into the mobo but the problem was in the BIOS. I had activated the iGPU setting for dual monitors and for some reason it was skipping display during POST. Shorted the pins on mobo to reset BIOS (be sure power is off and power cable unplugged). With BIOS reset the display returned.

Then I got other issues, an 0xC0000005 type error (something like STOP: 0x0000008E). When I reset BIOS I left the mobo security feature active and I have an old copy of softice loaded. It loads Windows on top of itself and the security feature did not like that. So, I disabled the Safe Boot feature by deleting Safe Boot keys in BIOS and all is well. I knew that BIOS replaces them if you reset it but I saved a set anyway..

My initial problem with no display was due to a faulty system hive in registry. It was so corrupt I could not delete it yet it looked fine viewing it with an external registry viewer. I think it was chkdsk deleted it for me. Fortunately I had a decent backup from 2021 and it ran fine, right to desktop.

[gordo999]

Some research on the 10xx series cards indicates that the newer Nvidia engine running the Pascal engine uses higher RAM addresses than XP is capable of reaching (limit = 4 gig for  32 bit address bus). Not sure if that is correct. However, I have seen discussion in the past about allowing XP to address beyond 4 gig.

If it is the case that the Pascal engine on 10xx cards needs memory beyond 4 gig, that seems to be an insurmountable limitation on XP 32 bit.