Install standard VGA driver (XP SP2)

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I’m trying to upgrade my video driver but I need to install the standard VGA driver first. Is there a trick to doing this in XP? I have tried to uninstall the current driver, but everytime I restart, XP re-installs it! I thought if I went into safe mode, it would only load basic drivers but that’s not the case.

Thanks!

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I think kaplinb is partially correct. However, my question is – are you trying to install a new video card, such as an ATI which tells you to change to a “standard VGA” prior to removing your old card? If that be the case, I think you would change, not un-install, using Device Manager. After you change to a standard VGA setting in Device Manager, you would then shutdown, not reboot. I believe at that point ATI says to take out your old card and insert the new.

If this is not what you’re trying to do, let us know some more.

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Thanks for the responses. I’m not at my own computer just now but I think I need to re-check what I downloaded. I currently have ATI’s High Excalibur Radeon 9250 display driver(s). I wanted to upgrade them so I went to ATI’s site and downloaded what I thought was the latest driver. When I try to install the new driver, I get an error message saying to install a standard VGA driver first….that’s where the problems started. Maybe I’ve just downloaded the wrong file.

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Deb,
You should also be able to get to a Standard VGA driver, by uninstalling the present driver in Device Manager, then rebooting. You should get a screen saying something like ” found new hardware, do you want to install it now?”
Click NO and it will probably ask you again if you want to install it, click NO. It should finally give up and install the Standard VGA drivers as default. I’ve done this a few times successfully with a Radeon card.

Then go ahead and install the new drivers.

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Thanks Bob.

When I restart the computer after uninstalling the drivers a small bubble comes up at the bottom right of the screen that says Found New Hardware, VGA compatible, then the Wizard comes up. This happens twice because (and I don’t know a lot about these things) but I have two display drivers listed; the first is the HE Radeon 9250 and the other says HE Radeon 9250 (secondary). What I did was cancel both of these wizards thinking that would do the trick. In fact another bubble window appeared that said something like “hardware not installed properly, you may have problems”. Thinking I was good to go with the new driver installation, I carried out the installation process only to have an error window pop-up saying something like “video.inf not found”; then a second error window backs that one up by saying “install standard VGA driver first”.

This is turning out to be quite the process!

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Deb,
Try this approach. It’s for Win2k but should work.

Go to: MSKB

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I do not understand what do you want to achieve. If you need to upgrade your video driver, you don not need to uninstall previous versions of the driver. Just force new driver installation (from Device Manager select the device, choose “Update Driver” and then consequently “No, not at this time”, “Install from a specific location”, “Don’t search”, “Have disk”, and if prompted, “Continue anyway”).

It is also possible to force Windows to install generic VGA video driver instead of specific driver for PnP device. But it it is not recommended !!!
If your driver was included in Windows (was in driver.cab in Installation CD), just rename its .inf file in WINDOWSINF folder. To prevent Windows to restore its .inf file immediately, also rename all instances of the file in WINDOWSDriver Cachei386Drivers.cab and SP2.cab (if applicable).
If your driver was installed from vendor-distributed source, rename its .inf file in WINDOWSsystem32drivers, also search for other instances if the .inf file and rename them.
Then you can uninstall driver from Device Manager.
Once again – IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED! You can make all your Windows installation unusable!

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To open Device Manager, click Start | Run, type DEVMGMT.MSC and hit Enter.

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