Video Card Question

[Apocryphal Misconceptions]

Hello everyone,

Some of you are definitely knowledgable on this matter. Recently, my Video Card stopped working.

I used a NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT card and right now I receive this error message: "This device stopped because problems have been reported (Code 43)."

There are a couple of questions:

1. Does this mean the problem is 100% definitely related to the video card or could a virus or something have caused this?

(I tried restoring it to an older version, tried getting the latest driver update etc but nothing seems to fix the issue)

2. Will any other NVIDIA video card be compatible with this desktop or do I need to look for other video cards in the same range of capabilities?

3. If I decide to buy a better card which can manage to pull off most higher end games on medium settings without them costing too much (up to 175 euro / 200 USD) are there any you'd recommend?

4. If I buy a NVIDIA card now, does that mean it might not be compatible for another PC I'd likely buy in the future, or are they pretty much universal?

If you can answer any of these, I'd be helped a lot.

Thanks

[Paha]

What windows do you have, and what kind machine do you have?

Videocards are not dependant on anything but having enough power from PSU and having capable motherboard with appropriate PCI or PCI-e so there's no bottleneck. Otherwise there's no hardware limitations really.

So buying new card now, it'll always be compatible.

Googling that report: "95% of the time, error code 43 means that a device driver is either missing, corrupt, outdated (so Windows problems communicating properly with the hardware), or the hardware is faulty and needs to be replaced."

As your graphic card is ancient in terms of current level of of devices, it's possible that windows has simply updated itself past your drivers. Update the drivers first of all, you can do so from Nvidias website by following instructions. Again, this situation depends fully what windows you have and have you recently done any updates or changes.

[Apocryphal Misconceptions]

Thanks first off all.

It's an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 3.00 GHz 4,00 GB RAM - Vista Home Premium.

I did try to update the drivers from the nvidia page, however the update continues to fail.

Going on what I imagine is the case and your feedback, I assume the Video Card is busted somehow.

If I were to purchase a high end video card, it /should/ function except it is limited in its potential by the weaker motherboard?  Did I understsnd that correctly?

[Unholy_Master]

Uninstall your current driver, before you install the new one.  If it's a download issue download the driver to a thumbdrive and you can install it from there.  If all else fails take your video card out and re-seat it in it's current slot or a secondary slot (if you have one) sometimes the cards don't marry well to the motherboard.

[Paha]

If your video card was totally busted, you likely would not be able to use the computer at all right now.

Are you attempting some automatic update function or are you downloading the appropriate driver for your graphic card model, windows (xp, 7 or 8), and 32 or 64 bit ? I would recommend you do as said above by Unholy_Master; Uninstall your graphic driver, then go and download the file.

Download them from this page: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

Input right information:
Product type: GeForce
Series: GeForce 9 series (These are the 9000 series and so on)
Windows: What ever windows type OS you have
Language: What ever language you prefer