I was using the last official drivers for Win9x(81.98) off the Nvidia site previously with my 5900, no shutdown problems at all.

All NVidia drivers I've tried shut down properly.

But 81.95, 81.98 + 82.69 do not allow to restart Windows [by running WIN.COM], after closing Windows to native DOS [C:\ prompt].

This may be due to your monitor changing resolutions/frequencies on-the-fly.
Between resolutions, some monitors may make noises/clicks and/or display a black screen for a fraction of a second.

This depends on monitor brand, manufacturer and/or model.
Some are better than others.

This is characteristic mostly to CRTs.

HTH

Actually all the drivers I tried for Windows ME shutdown properly....except these. Granted I only used official drivers from Nvidia with my GF5900. What i'm saying is I know it's not a problem with my Windows ME install. It never had a problem shutting down in the past until now, surprisingly.

I guess NVidia rushed these drivers out the door [the problem is there may not be others, they stopped development for 9x OSes], without making sure compatibility with all API functions on all 98/ME OSes.

Personal preference:
I still like 82.69 better because they support more resolutions/frequencies and widescreen monitors.

I installed the 82.69mod drivers on a Windows 98 SE. For now, all seems to work (relatively) fine. The system is:
CPU Athlon64 3200+ @2400MHz
RAM 1Gb
MoBo Epox EP-9NDA3J (NForce3 Ultra, AGP slot, s.939)
GPU Geforce 7600GT AGP 256Mb @ 560/1450

Just a few notes:
1. The setup program refuses to install the drivers. It justs tells me I don't have a supported video card and exits. I had to install the drivers manually (by unpacking, then selecting "Have disk" etc.)
2. Pixel shaders 2.0 did not work initially. I used 3dMark03 for testing and the Mother Nature Test and the PS2.0 test (the elephant/rhino one) either locked the computer or produced severe visual anomalies (such as the elephant being black). However, after I installed the last (october 2006) DirectX 9.0c version (was 9.0b before that) and the 2.1a service pack, the problem went away.
3. Yes, I can't shutdown the computer anymore too!
4. In 2D all is fine. The 3D performance looks not quite bad - I was able to reach 12800 in 3dMark03 vs about 13100 in Windows XP SP2 (on the same machine). I played Unreal Tournament for quite some time and didn't have any problems. However, UT2003 seems to me a bit slow. Still playable, just a bit slow. I'll see into it later, maybe I will be able to fix it.

In latest NVidia drivers, i experienced bad performance in 3D and movie playing until
- i switched "monitor synchronization" from auto to something else
This may help.

I just installed a brand new XFX 7600GT, and when running the NV8269.EXE setup I get



Nvidia's drivers installed fine on my XP partition. Anyone have any idea what's up?

EGOvoruhk, look at vbdasc post.

hello, was also trying a agp 7600gt on win98se, amd64 4000+, 1GB ram, mobo gigabyte nforce3...
exchanged my geforce 5700 against a 7600gt, was detected on bootup, drivers freshly installed , was able to change resolution and seems to work. but got some graphical 'glitches' in some games, then if found out that in the driver menu from nvidia the card was listed as 'unknown' but options were available. so i got the feeling this glithces maybe coming from the wrong expectation of the driver of hardware.... someoneelse got such behaviour?
greetings

Well, I have tested my configuration further and all I can say is just: It works! Great work, really Yes, I encountered some problems, but all are minor and can be fixed with some tweaking. I have a dual boot system with Windows XP, so in Windows 98 the games I played with were older ones, mostly. Again, some notes:

1. The "slowness" in UT2003 I mentioned before is probably only my subjective feeling. The benchmarks that UT2003 provides show only slightly lower FPS than in XP. Or may be it's related to the inferior CPU/memory management in Windows 98 in comparison with Windows XP? I don't know. This game is known to be rather CPU/memory hungry, after all. But I'll repeat: it is still fully playable. The "slowness" can be noticed only after one has just played the same game under Windows XP.

2. In 2D all is fine. But only if a 32bit color mode is used. In the 1024x768 16bit mode I noticed some weirdness: windows suddenly changing color, funny looking icons and tooltips and etc. The 2D/DirectDraw games I played look fine, even the 16bit mode ones like Heroes of Might&Magic 2 and 3

3. The 3D games I played look fine too. However, I played with Direct3D 2/3/5 games mostly. The UT2003 was the newest game I played.

4. OpenGL as in Quake3 Arena is fine.

5. DOS games. Here comes some trouble... In pure DOS 7, I haven't seen any problems. But in a Windows 98 DOS box (fullscreen, of course)... some games produced severe graphic glitches. I think these games all use the VESA APIs for accessing the screen. The problems disappear when the "Standard PCI graphic adapter (VGA)" is used. But there may be a better way: there is a free program easily found on the internet, NOLFB. It is a TSR, which disables the advanced VESA modes, forcing the game to use the more basic (an problem-free) ones. Using this program, I was able to play all my DOS games under Windows 98 without any graphic problems.

Have you tried the shutdown supplement? Also check if you have "assign irq for vga" set to "enable" in bios.

duplicated post - deleted

No, but I have installed the unofficial service pack 2.1a. AFAIK, it comes with newer versions of all files that the shutdown supplement updates.


My bios setup doesn't contain such an option; however, the resource table that the bios shows at POST time indicates the VGA card does get an IRQ (it's an AWARD bios).

P.S. My shutdown problem is exactly the same as the one described here.

Salute !!

First a big thank for this Driver !!!

i have testet this 8269 Driver with my new Bliss Geforce 7600 GT AGP (G73 chip) Device ID 02E0 . Runs perfekt , but i have shutdown problems.
replace it with Aopen 6800 Gt AGP no problem with shutdown.

would it be possible to modify this Driver to run the Geforce 7950 GT AGP (G71) Device ID 02E4 ???? No Way run Normal Mod in Win98 SE, Save Mod in VGA works.



Sorry for my English ... long Time ago

mfg KH

My System an old p4 3.06 512mb ram using 1 HDD for w98 and 1 HDD for XP

Your wish is my command...

Added device ID 02E4 .

Tweaked Unofficial NVIDIA Display Driver 82.69 for Windows 98/98 SP1/98 SE/ME:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php
NV8269.EXE [14.5 MB, multilingual]:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE

HTH

Thank You for the Update!

But the Driver does not go :-((

Tested with an modded Win98 SE: runs in Vga 16color an no Way to change
anything. Need long time to start.

Tested with an orig. Win98 SE: System hangs on initializion.Does not start in
normal Modus.

SaveMOde runs.

Before i installed the new 8269, i cleared all nivida thing and installed
VAG display Adapter. REgistry i cleared also.

There must be one switch in the Install-Routine.

Possible in the Nvinst32.dll ?????? View with the Hexedit shows no G71 Infos.
G70 and g73 are placed there.

Hope you will find a Way ....

Win98 gives me 2000 POints(3dGmark2001) more in Win98 then in WinXP
with the Geforce 6800 GT (14700 // 16700 )


mfg KH

MDGx, first lemme say kudos to you for at least getting the 7950GT (DevID 02E4) recognized in Win98!

I'm having a similar issue to what K-H described. I had to do a manual install since the auto-installer didn't detect the card. After the manual install the card seemed to be detected correctly. I tried to adjust resolution, which only allowed me to go up to 1024x768 @ 256 colors and required a restart. After the restart I was presented with a nice BSOD which is preventing Windows from loading.

Any ideas?

I use an old MSI MS-8817 V1 StarForce MX Series (nVidia GeForce2 MX400), in my ASUS A7V600-X board (which has VIA KT-600 / VT-8237 chipsets). So I don't really need to upgrade my video drivers, but I tested the 82.69 drivers to determine their compatibility with my old nVidia. I found out that they do work. But as with any nVidia drivers newer than 29.42, if I try to "Restart in MS-DOS mode" I get a blank black screen (the system gets into MS-DOS mode, for I can type blindly commands to reboot or turn-off the ATX power source and they work, but I see no video output). The same happens with the 29.90 drivers and with every 4x.xx or 3x.xx drivers that I've tested, up to now. But I've seen no comment on this issue here, and by surfing the internet found only two references to it:

[W98SE restart to MS Dos hangs] in the "Experts-Exchange", the two next-but-last comments (10.15.2002), both by josphII and [cannot Restart in MS-DOS mode], in the "WindowsBBS", post #2 (20th April 2003) by merlin. I don't reproduce the texts in those posts here because they add nothing new to what I said above, except that they show this has happened to others before.

Also, if I boot the system directly in MS-DOS, without loading Windows, there is no problem with the video output, but this is to be expected, I think.

Now, my question is: is this due to my specific hardware? Can some or all of you who tested 82.69, in Win 98 SE, restart in MS-DOS mode without any problems? Please do provide feedback!

As a solution for those who have this issue with the GeForce2 MX400, I recommend using the 29.42 drivers, but with
nvdd32.dll and nvopengl.dll from version 32.20, for added compatibility with DirectX and OpenGL. At least for me, this set up works flawlessy. And this may work with other old boards as well...

Just to relate my experience.

Yes, the shutdown AND the restart to MS-DOS Mode get broken by late model NVidia drivers in 98SE.

However the MS-DOS thing can be worked around by making a shortcut to command.com (the one in the Windows folder, not the Command folder!!!). Just type in the stuff you want to load in the Use a specific configuration boxes for Autoexec and Config.sys and when you use that shortcut the system shuts down and restarts in MS-DOS Mode properly and returns to Windows properly when you're done.

No fix that I'm aware of for using the actual Windows Shutdown. The darned thing always just leaves me with my monitor blinking the message, "Check System Display Settings," (or something like that) and I need to hold the power button to get the computer to shut off.

A safer way is to just always use Restart since that does always work, unlike Shutdown that sometimes closes Windows properly and sometimes doesn't. You can't tell which since all we see is the blinking monitor message while the computer still is running. With Restart, we can hold the power button down when we see and hear that Windows has unloaded and just turn the power off that way. No monitor malfunction when we use Restart. At least then we won't get ScanDisk on bootup the times when Shutdown wasn't finished and we had no way of knowing.

I've got to use a relatively recent driver since I have a GeForce 6600GT. Works great except for this problem.

Thanks a lot, Eck! Your feedback is most appreciated!

My experience with the v82.69 drivers is that they work, but the Shutdown and Restart to MS-DOS Mode options don't work for me anymore, and the driver is to be blamed. In fact, all Eck said is fully valid for my case too. The only difference is that my videocard is 7600GT.

Does anybody successfully run PCI-E GF7xxx/8xxx witch this modded drivers?
I downgraded from 7300 PCI-E to 6600GT PCI-E before this driver was released and I don't longer have 7300 so I cannot test it. But i somebody have some proven model I would like to upgrade.

I borrowed GF7300 PCI-E yesterday so I will try it myself...

I have a nVidia GeForce FX 5200 and have used drivers 77.72, 81.98, and these unofficial 82.69 drivers (currently installed).
I can't really say that I've had any problems with any of them although obviously my card is officially supported in 9x.
The only time I might have a restart or shutdown issue resulting in a black screen with cursor is if the Windows 98SE kernel becomes unstable.
Okay, so I have several driver versions I can use, but it must be the actual drivers that are causing shutdown/restart issues rather than the card.
I'm using a MSI MS-6321 (694D Pro) dual PIII mobo (only CPU2 used in 98) with AGP, 1GB RAM and Windows 98SE.
I have Unofficial Service Pack 2.1a, Auto-Patcher 98 August 2007, 98SE2ME 7.4, and Revolutions Pack 7 (current update fixes nVidia related issues) installed.

I personally think that the 82.69 drivers have a noticable performance increase over the 81.98 drivers.

Many thanks to MDGx for a sweet driver suite!

You have quite old system with AGP where I wouldn't expect any problems. I had Abit BX133 Raid with GF4MX440 AGP and it worked perfectly under 98SE including shutdown. The problem is nowdays screwed up mobos/bioses (I mean 9xx chipsets + PCIE)

@ MDGx
Thanks for updating the nv82.69 programme again. My machine now loads fine, without the blackout and judder!

Tweaked Unofficial NVIDIA Display Driver 82.69 for Windows 98/98 SP1/98 SE/ME:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php
NV8269.EXE [14.5 MB, multilingual]:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE

About shutdown problem - I'm 100% sure that it's caused by nvidia drivers because when I switch to standard PCI VGA then I can shutdown properly and even reboot to dos and return back to win. Once I switch to nV drivers it hangs again.

I agree but I think that using the Standard PCI VGA driver is not really proving anything.
This driver uses legacy VGA I/O and will not activate or utilise any AGP/PCI-E acceleration, system memory access, or any advanced chipset features.
I think the issue could be PCI-E as you put it:

Since I have AGP and have few problems (actually I had a restart 'black screen' today!), it would appear to be an issue with new mobos and PCI-E...
But, I still think it's the drivers rather than the new hardware. Some interaction between driver and hardware?

My two cents.

You are right, maybe also some chipset problem but I think that from programmer's view the PCI-E behaves same like standard PCI. Registers are accessed same way. I also have installed INF files for i945 and ICH7 so device manager should be happy.



I mean removing of legacy features. There was some standards how to controll some class of HW. Now it disappeared ad new vendor-specific come. E.g. messed up #SERR - NMI routing on all new MB causing SB Live emulation doesn't work for DOS games. Or when look at VGA - nVidia have VESA VBE 3.0 which allow set refresh rate under pure dos via standard way - they removed silently this feature and still marking their VESA BIOS 3.0 but I'm not sure now if CRTC setting is mandatory for 3.0. And more...

Of course, it's about interaction between driver and hardware but when HW standard is changed you have to write a new driver (because vendor doesn't write drivers for old OS) - BUT how do you write new driver when you don't have any documantation to HW?

Yeah, now I'm running on GF7300GT PCI-E - modified drivers 82.69 works fine. I use ZakMcKracken's version beacuse MGDX has some corrupted setup (it displayed dialog windows without text, only OK button and end with error - maybe problem is in SETUP.INI - when I replaced it by ZakMcKracken's one it installed too). I tested some games like GLQuake, Unreal T. , Unreal T. 2003 - all OK. I also compared performance to 6600GT and found that 7300GT is slightly worse. It I will upgrade then probably to 7600GT it would also work.

I have exactly the same error (empty dialog boxes with OK buttons only). Where can I find "ZakMcKracken's version"?
(Installing manually leads to lockup after booting...)


regards,
arthur

PS: I'm trying to install a 7600GS on a WIN98SE (with AGP 4x)

Try here: http://windows98.ic.cz in VGA section.
I'll probably buy 7600GS too because this 7300 have slightly less performance than my 6600GT.

I tried that version. The Installer worked basically, but told me it couldn't find any nvidia device and aborted.
Then I told windows to fetch the driver from that installers directory, which worked (copied some files etc).

But: as soon as I restart windows with the nvidia driver activated, it freezes after the first appearence of the mouse pointer.

I changed from LCD on DVI to a CRT on VGA with no effect.

I disabled the various nvidia programs from the autostart (via msconfig). Then booting worked. But the display settings are 800x600@16bit, and as soon as I start any nvidia tool (no matter which one, even display properties crash), the pc freezes and the display is shut off (to power save mode).
At the 800x600 mode there are display errors, too (some dotted stripes and distortions).

All driver versions I tried, showed the same picture, as soon as I got them installed, the PC froze (and switched the display off) after booting.

With a MX440 card, the driver works without problems.

There should be no hardware problem, because when using linux, the PC works fine. I think, if there were wrong settings in the BIOS, they would affect linux, too. (In my BIOS there is no option to disable BIOS cachings as described in the readme).

I'm using a fresh installed windows image with only the necessary motherboard drivers installed, so there should be no problem caused by other drivers.

Are there any updates, that I should install (on a raw WIN98SE) before the display drivers?

Are there any other drivers, that I can try? It would be a good start to use at least 2D functions with 1280x1024. I don't need 3D acceleration that badly on windows.

I'm at my wits' end now. Has anyone ever successfully installed a 7600GS on Win98SE?

regards,
arthur

PS: I'm using a K7VT2, Athlon XP 2100+, 512MB DDR RAM and a few HDs

I can report that 7600GS PCI-E works for me - I bought passive cooled card by Asus. I use setup.exe to install drivers and they find the card properly. After reboot it jumped to higher resolution and colors. I reuploaded the cuurent version I installed on site linked above.

The only one thing that doesn't work is refresh rate override - there's only "default" option and no choices for other freq. It worked with 6600GT. Anyway the refresh rates leaved set from previous install so I still have nice 85Hz. Is there some program or reqistry tweak to change it?

Here's a short comparison of all 3 VGAs on same system (I know UT2k3 is quite old and don't use new feats present on 7xxx)

UT2003 - 6600GT
botmatch-anubis.bat
6.414104 / 131.647461 / 235.257553 fps -- Score = 131.729263 500
GLQuake 192.5 FPS @500/500

UT2003 - 7300GT
22.087105 / 109.879433 / 247.155441 fps -- Score = 109.918694 350
25.551746 / 122.817650 / 239.012955 fps -- Score = 122.880478 400
34.479042 / 131.312286 / 235.985138 fps -- Score = 131.388199 450
GLQuake 178.3 FPS @350/350
GLQuake 208.0 FPS @400/400

UT2003 - 7600GS
27.910692 / 136.744904 / 241.676956 fps -- Score = 136.839706 400
39.587563 / 142.116074 / 236.930481 fps -- Score = 142.222290 450
23.092884 / 142.187195 / 239.293396 fps -- Score = 142.273376 500
GLQuake 201.8 FPS @400/400
GLQuake 228.2 FPS @450/450
GLQuake 243.9 FPS @500/470

7600GT AGP works properly for me with v82.69 drivers. My MoBo is Epox 9NDA3J, with the NF3 Ultra chipset, the Windows is version 98SE. As my system suffers from the shutdown trouble, it is obviously not related to the PCI-e bus The only patches/updates I installed were DirectX 9.0c and the Unofficial Service Pack 2.1a. Try them.

I tried both. Made no difference. PC still freezes after reboot.

Unfortunately, VIA are known to produce some quirky and troublesome AGP implementations. Try forcing AGP 2x mode in the BIOS setup. Also try to disable AGP fast writes and sideband addressing.

P.S. You have installed the VIA chipset drivers, of course?

P.P.S. Playing with the "AGP aperture size" might help too (especially for VIA chipset motherboards).

The card works fine with linux, so I don't think it's a hardware related problem.


Yep. Fresh downloaded.


Any hints on the value?

I tried now a different mainboard: MSI K8T Neo2-F V2.0 with a Athlon 64 3000+ (also AGP)
Exact the same error: as soon as the GeForce driver is enabled, the PC freezes after the next reboot.

Needless to say, that with the MSI mainboard linux also works fine with this video card.

I have only a few windows 98 programs left, and none of them needs 3D. Is there any possibility to run win98 with this card in a plain 2D mode with 1280x1024 and at least 16bpp? The W98 programs unfortunately need direct hardware access, so I can't use a virtualized system.

I searched for some universal VESA driver (like XP have) to use higher resolution on my portable 98se bootcd but nothing found.
BTW there's universal VESA driver for Windows 3.x I wonder nobody made it for Win9x.

Changing AGP settings in the BIOS had no positive effect.

But: if I disable display hardware acceleration, after installing the driver but before it gets started the first time, the PC does no longer freeze after booting.

It's not possible to enable the acceleration afterwards (freezes again), and all nvidia tools have to be banned from autostart permanently (otherwise it also freezes). But at least, I can set the resolution to 1280x1024@32bpp, the native resolution of my LCD.

Now that the PC doesn't freeze any longer, I was able to take a closer look on the display errors that unfortunately still occur.
I've taken a screenshot (http://files-upload.com/files/507334/7600gs_distortion.bmp, sorry for the crappy webspace). In the first line '101730...' you can see the original distorted text; it looks like smeared. The second line shows, how this error is increased, when the content (window) got moved around the screen a bit.

I'm still not really happy....

Hm, strange I don't have much accidents with bad rendering of nvidia drivers/cards. Once I remember on GF4MX440 it made strange effect when square checkboxes in windows was rotated about 10 degrees CCW, see this: http://www.volny.cz/rayer/windows/winbug.gif
but it was very rare (this fixed after reboot).

I'm done with that card. I've reverted back to my old MX440. The 7600GS will go to eBay....

wasted enough time on that...

but:
Thank you, all folks here, for trying to help me!

this driver works fine on my gf4mx420 pci card, it fixed my problem to

I try to use this driver in Japanese Windows 98,but I got error message on setup screen and can't install this driver successful.
Does this driver only use in English Windows 98 ?

StarRiver, see this post previously in this thread:
http://www.msfn.org/board/NVidia_drivers_8....html&st=34

Does anyone know if these NVidia drivers are able to be installed purely by the INF method ?? I don't want to include 14 MB of drivers if we need to run the setup program to install them.

I don't have anything to test on which is why i'm asking ... this is for the driver packs so its for a good cause!

Please see the text file:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php
HTH

Out of curiosity - would this help you any in furthering this driver package, MDGx? Considering there were users having issues with the GeForce 7 Series (and possibly later?)?

GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs
Windows XP/2000/Me/98SE - WDM Driver
http://www.nvidia.com/object/wdm_geforce_4.13.html

Thanks MDGx for these 82.69 drivers. They are the only thing I have found that will make my video card work properly under Windows ME. I installed them by running the installer, restarting and then doing the Display Properties->Settings->Advanced->Adapter->Change routine and running through that. One restart later and all was well. So far, the drivers seem very stable.

I am running an EVGA GeForce 7800 GS, AGP 4x, on an Intel D850 motherboard equipped with a 2.66 GHz PIV. I have a Viewsonic VP2130b LCD monitor with both DVI and RGB inputs. I am using the 7800 to drive the RGB input (I have another computer driving the DVI input).

I dual boot Windows ME and Yoper Linux 3.0. The 7800 GS card now works well in both OS' thanks to these brilliant new drivers!

There are still some minor problems though:

1/ When I start up, the Windows ME splash screen briefly disappears mid splash and then re-appears. Annoying, but not a danger apparently.

2/ Whenever I right click the desktop to get Display Properties, the screen blanks out completely for a second or so and then comes back with the Properties dialog displayed. If I carry on to Settings->Advanced, when I press the Advanced button, the same thing happens again. Again things carry on normally about a second later. If I shift my video cable connectors around so that the 7800 GS is driving the DVI port of my monitor, the splash screen "shudder" still appears, but is much, much shorter in duration - more like a brief flash - and the temporary "black outs" in the Display Properties dialogs do not occur at all.

3/ The machine will not shut down properly. It simply hangs part way through. I work around this by doing a Restart instead of a shutdown, which takes me to my Linux GRUB bootloader. I can shutdown from there successfully.

So, overall, great job! Since no one else had reported success with a 7800 GS, I thought I would post this.

If anyone has any ideas about what might be causing the splash screen and Display Properties issues, I would love to see a post back! Cheers!