Video Card, Video Chipset & VGA Mode?

I use my video card for windows but my chipset seems to be the one that is the one used when booting into windows (The black screen where u press DEL to access the BIOS and stuff).

I figure that uninstalling the chipset drivers would solve this problem, and copyright (btw by copyright I mean the AO member) confirmed this. But as you all know copyright isnt too reliable :p (jk :-D) and I asked him what would I do if my video card would mess up, he says the computer would go into 'VGA mode' but he doesn't know what that is so That my first question:

What is VGA Mode?

Second question is:

What would I do if my video card stops working? I dont have my chipset drivers on CD, I think I lost it in the move. But copyright says that I CAN access the internet in "VGA mode".

basically I want to gather all this information before I uninstall the driver so that I know what to do if my video card messes up without having to call copyright..

Google is your friend.

Actually I did do a google, and all I saw at first glance was how to enable VGA and 13h graphics thing which I dont know about. But after reading it, I saw something on delphi32.com, so let me get this straight, VGA is basically a video driver provided by Windows, that allows you to use your video card/chipset (without complete functionality) untill you install the drivers? If I'm wrong please correct me.

Which narrows it down to only one question:

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What would I do if my video card stops working? I dont have my chipset drivers on CD, I think I lost it in the move. But copyright says that I CAN access the internet in "VGA mode".

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:)

if you wanna see VGA mode just boot your computer in a "safe mode" ...



http://www.worldstart.com/tips/compu...rmsafemode.htm

All 'VGA mode' means is you screen resolution will be at either 640x480 or 800x600 (I forget which one, I think its 8x6)

The only way your vid card would really stop working is if it broke. If you didn't have the drivers for it installed it would just go into VGA mode until you installed its drivers.

If you don't have the driver disk you can just get them off of your chip manufacturers website.

Oh so safe mode = VGA mode? ok thanks everyone :)

"VGA" mode is 640 x 480. More importantly, it is 16 colours so you can resolve text OK but pictures and icons look really crap. They are generally good enough to work with though, so as long as you have a working card or chipset you can get by.

Back in the days of Win NT 4.0 the boot screen prompted you to select SVGA or VGA. The VGA option was to let you fix video problems specifically. I don't know why but we did have machines that mysteriously "reset" themselves to something outside of the supported size/colours/refresh rate. You used this option to get into the machine and fix it.

This was a bit different from safe mode, which wouldn't let you make changes to the settings/save them.

:)

EDIT:

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Oh so safe mode = VGA mode? ok thanks everyone

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No, "safe mode" loads the minimum amount of drivers services and peripherals, and uses a VGA setting of 640 x 480 16 colours. Your modem won't work in older versions of windows.

Starting the machine in VGA mode will load everything (including your modem) but with the basic video settings.

Obviously, we now have "safe mode with network support"

I uninstalled my chipset drivers, but I still don't see the black screen with my video card...but I was looking in the BIOS (suspecting it was in there somewhere) and saw "advanced chipset features". When I press enter, I see something about the video card, but it forgot what it said, I'm going to check immediatly after posting this. Regardless, how would I test this without screwing up my computer? because obviously without visual I can't really fix it..

EDIT: It says "Video BIOS Cacheable" and that's enabled at the moment. I'm going to do a bit of googling on it, but I'm still stumpted about what I would do if something goes wrong..

EDIT2: After googling and reading my mobo manual, it does exactly what the name says....it allows the caching of the video BIOS...so my question now is, how do I use my video card instead of my chipset to view the screen i'm trying to get (the black screen you see when your computer boots up, don't know the technical name for that..)

Do I understand correctly that you have on-board VGA and an additional VGA card?
Is the additional card PCI or AGP?

There might be an option in your BIOS (or with jumpers on the mainboard) to turn off the on-board VGA.

If the videodriver gets borked somehow, XP will still boot but your display will be limited to SVGA (800x600x256). Everything else (incl. Internet) would still work..

Edit: The black screen with the press DEL for BIOS.. It comes up during the POST (Power On Self Test)..

Hi Raion , sorry if this is not what you are after, but you imply that you don't see the "black screen with white writing"?

The answer to that is to go into BIOS and disable the "fast boot" option.

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so my question now is, how do I use my video card instead of my chipset to view the screen i'm trying to get (the black screen you see when your computer boots up, don't know the technical name for that..)

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That suggests that you have both onboard and a separate video card? Whichever you use should do the same, but if you want to use the card you probably need to disable the onboard chipset in your BIOS setup options.


;)

SirDice, you are correct, the additional is PCI.
Nihil, I saw the screen with white writing, but with the wrong videocard/chipset.

But after studying my mobo manual for a few minutes and really reading everything, I saw "Intergrated Peripherals" which I always overlooked for some reason..and in there they're soo much options (probably why I overlooked it, because I didn't wanna read it all). Amoung them, one caught my eye because it said "on board" and "pci" where the two options..it said 'Init Display First' and voila :)

Lesson learned: RTFM