Why is my old Nvidia card failing to start?

Question

I'd like to add a third monitor to my computer.

Unfortunately, my primary Nvidia graphics card only supports two DVI monitors, so I decided to take an old Nvidia graphics card from another computer and placed it in my motherboard's conventional PCI slot.

Once I restarted my computer, Windows was not able to find a driver from Windows Update, so it installed a "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" driver with a warning icon on it. The error is a code 10 error (This device cannot start). I attempted to install an old driver that is compatible with the secondary card, but this simply ended up with a bugcheck (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL) since the old drivers seemed to replace the newer ones. I had to reinstall the new drivers in Safe Mode in order to get the system operational.

However, this doesn't solve the problem. I suspected at first that the cause was an IRQ/resource conflict, but Device Manager does not quite explain the IRQs of nonworking devices. Using HWiNFO, the card name and rudimentary data is shown for the older card, but there is no indication that it is operational.

Is my card supposed to run correctly under generic drivers? Is this a WDDM problem? Or is this, as I had suspected, an IRQ conflict that cannot be resolved through normal means?

Specs:

• Windows 7 64-bit
• 8 GB RAM
• GeForce GTS 240 (primary)
• PNY Technologies GeForce FX 5200 (problem card)

Other notes:

• The old PC used 32-bit Windows Vista; the card handled it perfectly.
• My motherboard only has one PCIe port, so I cannot add a more modern secondary video card.
• I am only interested in a three-monitor setup. I am not interested in any gaming with the secondary card.

Answer 1

The Verdict

The card won't work alongside my primary one. Okay sure just because it's old right? No.

The last driver that supports the GeForce FX 5200 is, in fact, WDDM 1.0-compatible. This is why people report to have working Aero, but only when the drivers are installed. As an aside, the 5200 was one of the first to support DirectX 9, at least at a rudimentary level. Because this final driver cannot be installed with the primary card (as the primary card's oldest compatible driver is many versions further), the primary card tries to load these old drivers and evokes a bugcheck.

I tried to splice the new and old drivers together, but it did something awkward that led to another type of BSoD that appeared for such a brief moment that I could not even read it.

The "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" (vgapnp.sys) that Windows resorts to when it can't find a driver is apparently not compatible with WDDM. A non-WDDM driver cannot be loaded with a WDDM driver, so the driver fails to start, showing a Code 10 failure. This is the reason I will never be able to use the cards together. This is also the reason why the 5200 can start by itself, but not when the 240 is around.

The IRQ was a red herring: although ACPI gives Windows full control in assigning IRQs to devices, there is a feature in the PCI bus called IRQ steering, which means that multiple devices can occupy the same IRQ with no conflict. (If you run two PCIe x16 cards together, the two cards only use x8 bus width.)

While the card is capable (in performance) of working with my computer, there is no driver that is new enough to support it.

Sadly, I will have to scrap the whole three-monitor proposition. I have many spare monitors, but the PSU doesn't appear to be able to handle two middle-end cards simultaneously. Moreover, my motherboard only has one PCIe x16 port. There is physically no way to fit a cheap, new card into another slot.