PCTAV forces XP into quasi-VGA mode.

[PC-Pete]

Hi all!
As the saying goes: "You always find the answer in the last place you look."

A few days ago I physically moved an XP-Home-SP3-installed-HDD with PCTAV 6.0.0.18, from one VIA IDE chipset m/board to another. As usual, I booted in Safe Mode and watched as XP installed all the appropriate drivers, and then I restarted when prompted.
At the reboot, I noticed the various on-screen elements were all crowded into the "Welcome" screen. I logged in, same on the desktop. Checked the display settings: 640 x 480 32bit! Neither VGA or Windows default settings. I tried changing them by any/all means but whenever I clicked "apply", the slider would move inexorably back to 640 x 480. I tried 2 other AGP cards, a PCI, and even the PCI and an AGP together (just for the heck of it). Same result every time, 640 x 480 at the highest bit rate for the card.
I ran Registry Mechanic; tried uninstalling various leftover display tools on the off chance that one of them might be blocking normal display mode.
Before resorting to the pain of restoring from a 6 month old clone, I thought I'd try uninstalling PCTAV....

Problem solved! (at long last)

Never noticed this with earlier PCTAV versions. Any explanation? General warning to uninstall PCTAV before changing hardware or XP in-place install?

Pete :eek:

[haapy]

As a general rule for performing actions as you did, as well as installing major critical updates like Service Packs, major browser updates, major .Net updates, etc. it is a good idea to temporarily disable all system protection (AV/AS/FW).

It just ensures a cleaner install. When done, re enable.

You did a real sophisticated manuver for XP. Vista handles something like that a bit better, but that is not reason enough for me to convert to Vista!

[PC-Pete]

As a general rule for performing actions as you did, as well as installing major critical updates like Service Packs, major browser updates, major .Net updates, etc. it is a good idea to temporarily disable all system protection (AV/AS/FW).

It just ensures a cleaner install. When done, re enable.



Hi Haapy
What you suggest as a precaution against any security software inhibiting an installation is not an issue in this case. On each occasion while PCTAV was installed and active, the video card drivers were installed and the device name and parameters correctly indicated in Windows, including resolution settings appropriate for each PnP monitor I tried.
The problem was "fixed" by removing PCTAV. No drivers have since been been installed or re-installed in order to correct the problem. PCTAV was preventing Windows from starting normally, restricting it to a variant of the diagnostic VGA mode.

[PC-Pete]

Still at a loss to understand why but found this today:
Uninstalled Spyware Doctor and everything worked completely. (http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t91268.html)
Skim through the the whole thread. Some of it is not relevant.

For the record, I initially swapped from:
S3 ProSavage DDR (VIA chipset IGP)
to
Trident blade 3D - AGP 8MB
then
SIS 6326 - AGP 8MB
S3 Virge DX 375 - PCI 4MB
NVIDIA TNT2 M64 - AGP 32MB

[AChen]

Hi Pete,

We managed to recreate the problem and will be looking into this :)