Old graphics card to play Windows 7 blue screen troubleshooting

Not long ago Windows 7 released the RC version, many users who like early adopters have installed trials. However, some friends have reported that the new system cannot correctly identify the graphics cards below GeForce 6, and the display effect is naturally discounted. Although the driver installed under Windows XP can correctly identify the graphics card, the computer often has a blue screen after installation, and most of the video files cannot be played (only RealPlayer can successfully play AVI and RMVB files). In addition, the screen saver does not work except for blanks and slides, as long as the selection results in a blue screen.

The author suspects that the problem lies in the graphics card, it is likely to be a driver problem. To verify this, I downloaded a number of N official and unofficial drivers from VIDIDA graphics cards and tested them (the graphics card I used was GeForce4 MX 4000). In order to maximize the performance of the graphics card, the author started testing from the latest driver, until the 91.98 version of the driver, the blue screen problem has not appeared again. However, I would like to remind you that because the driver's installer does not correctly identify the Windows 7 system, the driver is either installed manually or in compatibility mode.

The next step is to talk about a few problems found in the trial driver. First, the Windows Media Center (WMC) program cannot be started. In the test, I found that to start WMC, the graphics card must have more than 64MB of video memory, otherwise the system will prompt "TV and video may not work properly, because the video card can not meet the 64MB minimum memory requirement of RAM" (Figure). The second is Aero special effects. According to the results of multiple tests under different drivers, the early graphics card can force the Aero effect to be opened, but it can not be displayed normally. At most, only the mouse movement can be seen. All the content on the desktop cannot be displayed, but the non-Aero theme can still Normal use.

Because Windows 7 is not officially listed yet, there may be BUGs of this kind or that, and users who like early adopters should not ask for too much. It is believed that with the continuous improvement of the system and the improvement of the hardware manufacturers in terms of drivers, many problems will be gradually solved. Of course, for users who use the old platform, if you have hardware problems when using the new system, try some "old" drivers, maybe it will be another village.