Hawk & Badger Railroad Forum

I wonder if you can give me some advice on a few problems I'm having? I'm not very technical so forgive me if these are simple problems that I ought to solve in seconds!

My husband bought me a new video card for Christmas (how romantic!) and my son-in-law installed it for me. Since then, the computer's gone pear-shaped, but I don't want to upset my son-in-law by asking him to fix it.

First of all, the thing won't shut down properly. It goes through all the shut down routine but doesn't actually switch off. If you switch it off manually it starts a scandisk when you switch back on again - "improper shutdown". I've worked through the MS Help shutdown wizard and nothing fixes it. I have Windows ME, by the way.

Then something's gone wrong with the sound - there just isn't any. In the diagnostic thing there aren't any hardware conflicts and, yes, all the leads are in and so on. I very rarely have the sound turned on so this could be a long-standing problem for all I know.

Then the Old Man bought me SMRR for my birthday and it won't launch. It's installed OK and we've got as far as a couple of seconds into the video before it says it's caused a problem with Kernel.DLL (?) and will shut down. Usually it doesn't even get to that stage. When you try and launch, it accesses the CD, then there's a bit of whirring back and forth with the hard disk, then nothing.

If anybody can tell me what I need to do about any of this, I'd be most grateful. Sorry for the lack of technical details.

My family purchaced me a graphics card for Christmas as well. I am haveing a different result. What kind of computer and graphics card are we talking about? Without knowing that yet all I can ask is what is the power reccomended for your card compared to the wattage of your computers power supply. As for running smrr, I am afraid me won't run it. It will run on windows 2000 or XP. Sorry.

Grandma Ruth - Between you and Hawk, I did not know 2007 was the YEAR OF THE BUG on the Chinese calendar.

First, you said two of my "favorite" words - - - WinME and SMRR!!! OK, now that we have that EYEPOKE out of the way, can I help? Probably not without hands-on, but here's my :

I learned in computer class that shutdown issues usually lead to bad drivers. First, you need to go to the site for your new video card. MAKE SURE it is compatable with ME as if it is REAL new, may not be. If so, find the most current drivers (which may be ME specific), download and install.

If that does not work, you may need to REMOVE the drivers in the hardware profiles, which can be complicated for even a good IT person (or one who thinks they are) and down right dangerous for a novice.

Work ONE problem at a time. When you solve the video issue and the thing shuts down OK, THEN attack the sound problem. I don't think they are related.

As a LAST resort, depending on the age and speed of your machine (with ME, you might be hurting), might just be worth it to back up all your files and load XP (sorry Hawk).

The computer I built in 2001 (600MHz Celeron running Win98) handles XP just fine with a new $98 80GB 7200 RPM hard drive. So, for about $200, your machine might have a few more good retirement years. When's your birthday?

Good luck and I'm sure there will be MANY others with advice that might just lead directly to the problem.

Is your monitor connection plugged in to the new video card and not into its old connection. Also check to see if the speaker connection was moved to the new card. I believe you can leave it connected to the old sound card and see if that corrects the problem.

I run ME. Fewer back doors to shut.

To be enigmatic here (looking at my own short comings) When all else fails I read the directions. (again)

in regard to your sound problems,
it might be a good idea to try and find out if it is a hardware problem, or if its a problem with software/windows.
I would suggest you download a live cd compatible linux version
(check out kubuntu- http://www.kubuntu.com/ )
run it in live cd mode (which wont effect windows at all).
and see if you get sound in it,
it may also be possible to find out more about your vid card problems this way too,
:)
(if the iso file is too big to download, you can also get Kubuntu shipped to you on cd for free!
See: https://shipit.kubuntu.org/

Thank you all so much!!
All problems solved, I'm glad to report!
I'm ashamed to say the speakers were plugged into the wrong port, as simple as that. I re-installed the graphics card and that sorted out the start-up problem. I'll just have to resign myself to not having SMRR! until I upgrade, if that ever happens - not such a great sacrifice, it seems from some of the reviews.
I appreciate all your advice, guys.