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I have a major issue with my old Dell Dimension XPS T500. The thing has always been a little cooky, but now it's gone off the charts. My brother recently moved out, so I decided to uninstall all of his old games and software to free up some space on its 20 gig hardrive (lol). Well, in the process, I realized I didn't want ANYTHING on the computer aside from an OS and Photoshop 5.0. I formatted my drive and reinstalled windows 98 se just fine. When I booted up, I realized that my graphics card driver had been deleted too (of course), so I went to go reinstall that.

Well, long story short, I have no idea what graphics card I have. I called up my computer science major friend and we decided to open the CPU and check out what sort of card I have. We couldn't find anything to identify it at ALL. I found documentation for an ATI Xpert 98D card in a drawer, but no driver disc. So I wandered online and found a few different drivers that said they'd work with that and anything else "based off of the Rage XL".

I tried a few, but the only progress I made was being able to SELECT something more than 16 colors and a 648x480 resolution. When I went to apply it, it wouldn't let me.

It was late, so I decided to just shut it down. This morning, when I booted it up (because I found the driver for an ATI card in another drawer), it whirred up, but the monitor wouldn't connect. The computer gives two long beeps with one short one (I think. Can't check because I'm about to jump out the door to school). Then it just grinds down and shuts down. If I pop in my bootup disk for 98se, it runs and stays on, but I can't see anything. Help?

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Dani AI

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Good follow-up, . For anyone else hitting video loss or "unknown graphics card" headaches on older PCs, here are practical, low-risk steps that are easy to apply and usually fix the problem without guesswork.

Start by identifying the card physically before hunting drivers. Power down, unplug, and remove the card; look for printed part numbers or a manufacturer sticker on the bracket or PCB edge and photograph any markings. If you cannot read useful markings from the card itself, boot from a modern live Linux USB and run:

lspci -nn | grep -i vga

That gives vendor/device IDs you can use to find exact drivers. If you must work in Windows, use Safe Mode / VGA Mode (press F8 at boot) to get a usable display and query Device Manager.

If a driver install kills video, use these recovery moves: boot to VGA/Safe Mode and uninstall the driver; keep a copy of a known-good driver on removable media before changing anything; test the monitor and cable on another machine; and try one RAM stick and minimal expansion cards to isolate hardware faults. Beep patterns and shutdowns often indicate hardware problems — consult the machine’s service manual for exact meanings rather than guessing.

Preventive tips: archive driver installers and a boot/rescue disk for the OS you use; photograph and label old cards before removing them; and handle boards with ESD care. On very old systems, flaky capacitors and failing PSUs are common culprits, so if a problem recurs after driver work, test with a substitute PSU or a different video card to rule out hardware failure.

Member Avatar for LynnSnow

Problem solved. Got home and reseated my RAM and graphics card and it booted in safe mode. Then I found the correct driver for the card, installed it, and it's running fine!

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