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Adding a video card to a system

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
I have a video card (AGP based Nvidia GeForce MX4000, 128meg) that I want to install into my in-laws E-machine. Currently, the system has on board graphics with shared memory. The system only has a single 256meg RAM stick, with 64 of that going to video memory...and 192meg is just barely enough to run XP. I was able to free up 25 meg of RAM by going into the BIOs settings and reducing the AGP Apeture setting from 128 meg to 32meg.

I know how to install the card and drivers....have installed lots and lots of cards. But, I have had issues with XP and adding hardware. And I would rather not have to rebuild their system from a total format (actually I would love to format their system and rebuild it the right way...without AOL, Norton, and several other pieces of crappy software that my sister-in-law tells them that they absolutely need)...but the in-laws would throw a total fit if I were to do that.

Is there a way to install the video card without totally trashing XP?

I know that I will have to make BIOs setting changes...no problem there. Just don't want to do anything to upset XP's fragile nature.

And relatively speaking, adding the video card and drivers will be the easy part. Convincing my tight-wad father-in-law to let go of $40 so I can order in 2gig of PC3200 RAM will be the hard part. That man pinches pennies so hard that Lincoln ends up with black eyes.

OBIO
 
It should be a fairly simple installation and I presume that you checked and there is an actual AGP slot. I think the procedure is to uninstall (and use Driver Cleaner Pro) the current video card driver. Shut down, reboot just to make sure it's uninstalled, shut down again. Install the video card, then boot the system and immediately enter the BIOS and disable the onboard video card. Save and exit, once the computer has finished booting it should indicate that new hardware has been detected. Install the new video card driver, reboot, then set up the video card settings.

And 256MB of RAM is going to be a serious bottleneck, Windows XP does much better with 1 GB.
 
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