Video card nightmare!!

[LakeTahoeGuy]

I recently had to switch back to the video card (Voodoo Banshee) that came with my PC (Gateway G6-400) because the one I upgraded to about 3 years ago was failing. Things were fine for a few hours, but now i'm having problems with it suddenly reverting to a very low screen resolution (grey & white) and giving me the following error message...

"The Banshee Display Driver has stopped working normaly. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machinea dialog will be displayed giving you a chance to upload data about this failure to microsoft."

After the reboot I get a message saying the system recovered from a failure and the error signature is as follows.....

BCCode : ea BCP1 : 823B83C8 BCP2 : 826D8458 BCP3 : 827CD4F0
BCP4 : 00000001 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 2_0 PRODUCT : 768_1

It also tells me the following.....

The following files will be included in this report :
C:\DOCUME~1\mogite\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER6e3e.dir00\Mini030105-02.dmp
C:\DOCUME~1\mogite\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER6e3e.dir00\sysdata.xml

After the report is sent to Microsoft i get a link to Microsoft Online Crash Analysis that says the following.....

Analysis Information

Thank You for submitting an error report. The error report was likely caused by:

Video Driver (3DFXVSM.DLL)

Video Driver (3DFXVSM.DLL) was created by 3Dfx Interactive, Inc. (acquired by NVIDIA Corp) This product is no longer supported by the manufacturer. For more information see the 3Dfx Interactive, Inc web site at www.3Dfx.com .
I uninstalled the ATI drivers from the video card I removed (Radeon 8500LE) and was told to reload the video drivers to my original card, but am having problems doing so. I was told to reload them from the gateway disk that came with the PC, but I was told I should be able to run it and select just the video driver to reinstall, but when I autorun it, Video Drivers aren't one of the options. The software options are McAfee Virus Scan, LANDesk Client Manager 3.31, Intellipoint Mouse, Megaphone, and Netscape. When i look at the Drivers folder on the disk I can't tell which one is the video driver. Non of the files end in .dll like the video driver that is supposedly causing the crash. The link to 3Dfx.com is not much of a help in that the links provided there for original as well as 3rd party drivers don't all work when i go to the mirrors. One of the links actually goes to a site called ganjacity.de !! Some of the other mirror won't load. I was given a link by someone in a tech chatroom that has ALOT of drivers there, but I don't know which of the drivers are the right one. There are about 20 drivers that have Voodoo, 3Dfx, and/or Banshee in the name. I even tried to go through Device Manager to do a driver update, but it just comes back saying there is no better match than driver version currently on my PC. But something is obviously wrong with it. Where do i go from here??? :confused:

[LakeTahoeGuy]

not sure if this is a related issue, but the beep that sounds when the PC boots has gotten longer. I have a link to a list of all the various beep codes & what they mean, but there is nothing listed for a 2 second beep. The beep i've always gotten before was only a second. What would a change to a longer beep mean? One beep, not a combination of long & short, but one 2 second beep! This PC has become QUITE frustrating, but I won't be able to buy or build another one for at least 6 months so I figure out how to fix these problems or i'll find myself without a PC at all.

[Thong_Ispector]

Look up the beep codes for your particular machine..

My first guess is that you dont have a video card problem. One long beep sounds like a RAM problem. Try and reseat it. A word of caution, if your system is dirty, get a can of air and blow off the crusties BEFORE pulling the ram out so it does not fall into the slot as you pull the chip out. Since the beep is on powerup I assume you dont have an overheating problem unless the beep is ONLY after the PC is rebooted and been on for a few minutes (Check your fans while you are in there). You could also have a power supply that is marginal or failing.

Sorry about being so vague but those are the possibilities as I see them...

[dphinchcliffe]

Ok..i found a solution to the problem but do not get excited. i had the same problem, a graphics meltdown then a shutdown, then when it was started up i got the same error info. if u have the ATI catylyst control center from a ATI graphics card all u have to do is check off VPU recover, what this does is it restarts the graphics card without any issues when ur graphics meltdown happens, it doesnt even quit the game it acts like it never even happened! The only problem is that i believe only the ATI catylyst control center offers this : (. if u can find a VPU recover system for ur G card it should be find : ).