Installing new video card. Keeps defaulting to onboard card.

Factual Questions
1

So I’m installing a spare nVidia G4 graphics card on a friend’s computer. I downloaded the drivers from their site, disabled the onboard generic card and had everything working fine. But for some reason it keeps defaulting back to the onboard card after a reboot so I need to connect the monitor to the original just to set up the new one.

I set it up so it doesn’t split the desktop to both cards, I made the nVidia the default card, and I can’t think of what I’m not doing now to get the settings to stick.

Any help? Thanks

2

There is usually a BIOS setting for what video to use first, did you look there?

3

Yeah, I checked that and it offers PCI and AGP. Nothing about the on-board card. FWIW, it’s a PCI card. Like I said, it will work until a reboot.

Just now it wasn’t giving a signal, so I moved the cable to the on-board port. It booted to the XP screen, but then went blank (light was still green, though) as if the desktop were on a second monitor. So I removed the card and rebooted and it’s working now. However, I’d still like to install the card since it’s much better for gaming. Also, I never had this problem when it was installed on my system.

4

Like Yoyodyne said, there should be a setting in BIOS to disable any onboard graphics (as well as sound, NIC, etc). Some have a setting for which graphics card to use first, PCI or AGP.

Short of that, in display properties, on the settings tab, there is a check box for “use this device as the primary monitor”

Select the new card and display, check that box, save.

5

Try the Device Manager

To open Device Manager, click Start, and then click Control Panel. Double-click System. On the Hardware tab, click Device Manager.
Find the card and right click for the options Enable, Disable and Remove

6

Sometimes it’s listed as the amount of RAM to dedicate to video memory, and one of the options is to disable internal video.

7

FWIW, there may just not be a way to do it. My newish Gigabyte 8VM800PMD-775 motherboard has no setting to disable the onboard video; it always dedicates 64MB of main memory to it. It claims to “automatically disable” the onboard video if you put a video card in, but it didn’t work when I put my PCI Radeon 9500 in, so perhaps it only works with an AGP card. Or perhaps it doesn’t work at all.

8

The onboard would be the AGP, I assume you tried setting it to PCI and it didn’t work?

9

Some motherboards have a jumper to disable on-board video (maybe in conjunction with a BIOS setting). Find out the motherboard model and look it up from a .PDF from the manufacturer. Or you might be able to browse the motherboard with a flash light for the jumper and look for a label.