I have just swapped out my GeForce 5200FX 128Mb for a GeForce 7300GT 256Mb. Although Nvidia site says same driver works for both and I already had lastest version on, I uninstalled it anyway and swapped over and inserted bundled CD. On boot it found new card, found files on CD, installed and said was good to go. I ran a few games I have installed, San Andreas, UT2004, Race Driver 3, maxxed out the res and all the settings and they ran great. Look great and play perfect. Was quite happy until I went to finish watching a film I downloaded the other day and everything hung. Completely. I couldnt even bring up task manager. The mouse still works but everything else was just dead. In the end had to force a reboot holding power button. Over the next half hour I tried all video types, avi, DVD, wmv, mov, etc, and various players, BSPlayer, PowerDVD, WMP10, Quicktime, all of them hang when I try and run a video file. So I tried uninstalling the bundled driver and reinst the latest nvidia one from the site, but it still does it. Windows itself and games are fine. But attempting to play video hangs! Everything was 100% on old card so its def an issue with the card.... Anyone got any suggestions cos I dont gettit?? (P4 3.0, 1Gb ram, 160gb sata drive with acres free, well over 120Gb, have all latest drivers, latest directx etc)
Quick dig found others also having issues here although not with exact same card but with nvidia. Tried lowering hardware acceleration as they mentioned and yes mine now play, but with sh!tty quality once directx is disabled. So must be some conflict somewhere...
Try uninstalling the new drivers and then reinstalling the old drivers that worked before with the old card. Or perhaps an earlier driver set that still supports the new card. I ran into a problem when I tried to upgrade my current video card (GF6200) in order to play Splinter Cell Double Agent. Most things would work except when I played any video with any software app. The fool thing would hang completely. I found that no matter what I did, I could not use Nvidia drivers beyond 84.26 on my system. I ended up keeping my current card with the 84.26 drivers. The few newer cards (using an AGP slot) that I could find were not supported by the drivers I could use. Using the newer drivers caused my video functions to barf up. My system is P4, 3.0GHz, 1gig ram, GF6200 w/256mb card. Go figure. Sounds like you are experiencing something similiar. No one at Nvidia had any intelligent help. I checked cards, game requirements, and what drivers supported which card(s). So, I am keeping what I have until a complete new machine is purchased. This helped my stress levels as nothing else would work.
Tried about 10 different versions of the driver from latest to version released on the CD and none work. Put old card back in and everything ok again so its def the card and not anything on my pc like codecs etc....
Today have also tried a 256Mb 6600 and a 256Mb 6200 and BOTH do exactly the same thing... Dunno which way to go now...
I am leaving my system as is until I update to a complete new machine in a year or two. How old is yours? What specs? Does it do what you want or need? If it is older, it might make more sense to just use it for a while longer and buy completely new (like I am planning) rather than update a piece here or there. It all depends on what you are using it for right now. Updating a video card should be simple. Have done it several times previous to this. BUT, this time it was not. I can wait for the complete new rig with all new everything.
