Once upon a time, in a galaxy far,far away there was a poor lad who was unable to play games on his computer. That poor lad is me, and I cannot take it much longer. A virus hit my computer and wiped out the account my brother was using at the time. I managed to get the pc back in working order, my account appeared unaffected. I still had all of my music. However none of the shortcuts worked, so I was forced to reinstall a lot of stuff. One thing of interest is that most of my games do not work anymore, they simply won't run. Old games like 1602 A.D. or Age of Empires 2 don't have a problem, but the beloved Rome Total War and most of my other games won't run, not even Risk II. After running DXDIAG I found that under the DISPLAY tab it shows that there is no device. Under notes its states...
The system is using the generic video driver. Please install video driver provided by the hardware manufacturer.
Direct 3D functionality not available. You should verify that the driver is a final version from the hardware manufacturer.
Obviously this is the problem, however I'm not so sure about how to fix it. I'm assuming that I need to install the drivers for my graphics card, but I fear doing that. My PC has an integrated graphics card on the motherboard. A year ago I bought an ATI Radeon 9550 and installed it myself. However this caused my computer to be unable to function. I had to take it into a shop and they said that I had not removed the previous graphic card drivers, thus causing the problem. The virus would appear to have wiped out most of what was installed, including the driver for my ATI graphics card. So I guess what I'd like to know is...
How is my computer running without showing a device for the display?
Why do those few games play without the device being shown? Even the integrated card was able to play most of the games that I have, but it won't play them now.
If I install the ATI drivers will that cause a conflict between my old integrated card again? (I can't afford to take it back to a computer shop again if this causes my computer to not function)
Have I investigated as much as possible into the actual problem?
What would you suggest that I do, that wouldn't risk causing more problems?
Is this a really simple problem that involves hitting a really big red button?
Thank-you very much for taking the time to read my woes. I would really appreciate any help on the subject.
