I am having trouble with an old Acer Aspire Desktop. It is running Windows 98. It has an onboard 2MB ATI Mach 64 video card. I installed a Nvidia TNT2 16MB PCI graphic card in the first PCI slot. When I turn on the machine the new card is not found by Windows. The onboard video card still works for awhile, but it freezes up after a little while. I have tried running Add New Hardware via the control panel, but the new video card is not found. Any guidance would be appreciated. If I take the PCI graphic card out and re-boot the onboard card works fine.

you may need to tell the BIOS to use the card instead of the onboard (might do this automatically) and install the drivers from Nvidias site

I cannot disable the onboard video card in the bios. The pci card works in another machine so I know the card works. And I had a network adapter in this pci slot so I know the slot is OK as well. I am not sure why it is not seeing the card at all.

have you installed the drivers?

windows 98 does not have proper plug and play, drivers will be needed

Depending on the BIOS you can TURN OFF the onboard video-under peripherals

You may need to use ALT-P to change BIOS pages to get to it. OR
under peripherials- it may say Video Device [AGP] which may have been the ATI Mach64.

Also depending on the mobo manfacturer it may be a jumper on the motherboard. Especially if it is Intel chipset. VIA is usually in BIOS, but you can use PCI video. If you leave it on (onboard) it may be trying to extend the desktop and manually have to tell it not to.

Here's some steps: Download and save drivers to PC before starting then>>
In Safemode - remove ATI from [Hardware Devices] device list
reboot to BIOS (under peripherials)
enable PCI video, or disable [AGP/onboard]
save settings & turn off machine
plug SVGA cable to PCI Video card.
restart Normally

If if asks for drivers, point to driver folder where you installed the downloaded drivers.

That should fix it.

aka Kegtapper
PnP should find the card -


use the left arrow/right arrow.

I may not be explaining this well. The bios assigns IRQ's to the pci cards. The bios for some reason does not assign an IRQ to this card. I have tried manually assigning an IRQ to this pci slot in the bios but that does not help. I downloaded the Nvidia executable from their site and tried to load drivers, but their executable did not find the card either. When I run Add Hardware via the Control Panel that does not find the card either. The bios does not know this pci card is installed or does not know what to do with it. Help, please.

The slot must be broken maybe?

I had a network adapter card in this slot before and it worked fine.