[XPTroubles]

Hi everyone -- I'm new on the board, and I'm having some problems with my computer. Many times, my computer will freeze, and after awhile, a blue screen will flash quickly with an error message (?) before the computer completely restarts itself. Afterwards, a window will pop up saying that "The driver for the display device was unable to complete a drawing operation." I've been ignoring this problem for quite some time. The thing is -- even when my computer DOESN'T freeze now, an "error" box will pop up every time I start up windows, asking me to report the error. Please help if you can! Thank you!

 

[x5dr]

sounds like your video driver is corrupted...if it is ATI or Nvidia I would delete it with this...

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=3214

and then install the latest driver (you might be able to find it at www.guru3d.com)

if it is a different kind of driver do a google search for the download site.

 

[XPTroubles]

Thanks x5dr -- what IS a video driver? Now I'm wondering how it got that way? Will it affect my computer in other ways (or get worse) if I ignored it (or delete it but not d/l a new one)? Thanks again!

 

[x5dr]

all of your hardware has a specific driver that let's it comunicate with your software...95,98,ME drivers are totally different than NT,2000, XP drivers. A piece of hardware will not work at all if you don't have the driver installed.

If this just happened, you can do a System Restore which should revert it back to a working condition but if you have added software or made any other changes to the registry it will revert it too.

You could try ROLL BACK driver in Device Manager.

rt. click an empty space on your DESKTOP and go to Properties/Display Properties/SETTINGS/Advanced/Adaptor/Properties/Driver.
what does DRIVER PROVIDER say. That will let you know what kind of driver you need. Let us know and someone will make a recommendation.

(you could delete the driver and reboot...XP will install a driver
but I recommend installing the newer one)

After you roll back to a previous version or delete and reboot or reinstall you will need to go back to Display properties and adjust the resolution and bit rate...and maybe the monitor refresh rate. It will probably boot to the lowest settings the first time.