Hardware Manager, Video Adapter, Yellow Exclamation mark is castin stone.

  • Thread starter Thread starter LURKER
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L

LURKER

I need help really bad. Hardware Manager yellow exclamation mark is cast in stone on "Display adapters".
Of course I have only one.

Message that is the big clue seems to be cast in stone, even with new motherboard.

Scenario:
Starts back in 2006.
Installed Gigabyte motherboard and I could never get rid of the yellow exclamation, even after loading the S3 drives
from the CD that came with the MB.

Everything seemed to work fine, so I finally went on with life, until the video adapter failed, and I put in a cheap
nVidia video card.
Same old story. Hardware Manager correctly identified the card and all worked well, but the exclamation mark still there.

Device Status:
Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)

Google Earth would not run in HD 3D even thought the DXDiag said it was okay. However, dxdiag also told me:

The system is using the generic video driver. Please install video driver provided by the hardware manufacturer.
DirectDraw test results: All tests were successful.
Direct3D functionality not available. You should verify that the driver is a final version from the hardware manufacturer.

To shorten the story, I have upgraded MB and processor, and tried the built in VGA,
same problem.

I have tried 2 video cards:
Ge Force 7300 GT AGP (old MB)
Ge Force 9400 GT PCI-e (new MB)

Same old problem.

My thoughts...
The original installation of XP Home has some registry settings that are not getting cleared or updated.

I am very familiar with and comfortable with Registry. I need to know how the registry keys identify which driver to
tie to which video card. I need to track this down. The video card software is not clearing or resetting a very old
pointer.
Huh?

Note:
Motherboard replacement was through using Repair, and then fixing the problems that regression to SP 2 created.
 
Did you install the video drivers provided by the manufacturer of the
video card?

John
 
Yes,
And the Device Manager showed the nVidia drivers, however, the Device Manager Properties of Display adapters still shows

Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)

I currently uninstalled and removed the video card, and have returned to the built in adapter on the motherboard and
installed the drivers that came with the motherboard VGA.

It now correctly shows the adapter as
"Intel(R) G33/G31 Express Chip set Family"

Yellow Exclamation point is there, and still says...
Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)

My think is thus:
No matter what motherboard,
no matter what video card,
the fault is consistent.

That tells me that the problems is in Windows XP. It is the only thing that is common.

What I need to understand is how does the driver/Windows configuration find the hardware? What ever is involved with
that process, must have a setting that does not get changed any more.

Lurker
(carl)
 
You said in your earlier post that you "...Installed Gigabyte
motherboard...". This was a replacement board on an existing Windows XP
installation? Did you do an in-place upgrade (reinstall) of the
operating system after you replaced the board?

John
 
When you installed the other video cards, did you go into the BIOS and
disable the on-board video chips? It's possible that the warning you
are getting still applies to your on-board motherboard chipset.

Did you go to the Intel website and download the drivers for your
chipset? It sounds like the wrong driver has attached itself to your
hardware and it almost works but not quite.
<http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/cs-026488.htm>

HTH,
John
 
I always try that first, and often, later do it again. I just can't believe it did not work.

What's interesting, I always get the advanced resolution choices, but not the advanced features.

I'm not a gamer and don't care about the advanced features, but I was bugged about the perpetual Yellow Exclamation. It
never affected my system usage for years. (This all started early 2006.)

Carl
 
System History:
Built a Clone with a Gigabyte P4VM800 and 1 GB DDR.
Installed XP Home OEM.

About a year ago the Gigabyte MB video failed and I installed AGP video card. It worked fine... except I still have
yellow exclamation.

More recently when I tried Google Earth. It would not (still won't) run in DirectX mode. Runs in GL compatibility and
it is really slow in some features. All this recent upgrade activity is about that issue, so now I have new MB, Pentium
E6600 and 4GB RAM, and did the MB upgrade with the "System Repair" procedure and all the pain and complications
regression to SP 2 files creates, but I finally got it all back to "normal" SP3 plus updates.

When we upgrade drivers, often the driver checks for the existence of it's required hardware, else it doesn't install.
I don't know how to use that information in this case. If the driver tested the video hardware, then that tells me
that the driver can find it, but Windows can't.

Carl
 
Neither motherboard has BIOS manual video configuration. It is all done by automatic detection of a video card.

Regarding the question about the on board video having a problem... yes, I considered that until I tried a new
motherboard. I no long think it is a possibility.

Symptoms are the same, no matter which MB, or using a video card. The only thing common with all that hardware is...
WINDOWS.

Carl
 
Neither motherboard has BIOS manual video configuration. It is all done by automatic detection of a video card.

Regarding the question about the on board video having a problem... yes, I considered that until I tried a new
motherboard. I no long think it is a possibility.

Symptoms are the same, no matter which MB, or using a video card. The only thing common with all that hardware is...
WINDOWS.

Yes, I already tried downloading the drivers from the Intel web site before I came to this forum for help.

Carl
 
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