MSI Geforce 3 Ti200 Driver Updates for ME

Question

Why can't the drivers be updated past 44.03 in Windows ME?
Multi-boot two operating systems
Abit KG7-Raid
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
512 MB DDR
MSI Geforce3 Ti-200 TD Pro:
MSI 44.03 drivers with Windows ME
Nvidia 52.16 drivers with Windows XP Pro
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer
Cambridge Sound Works FPS2000 Digital Surround Speakers
NEC 97F 19" Flat Screen Monitor
Linksys 10/100 Etherfast NIC
Maxtor 30 GB HD
IBM 10 GB HD
Yamaha CDRW
Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro
Microsoft Intellimouse Optical
US Robotix 56K modem (until NOV. 20, 2003 when cable broadband available   )
I run all my games on WME so that I have more RAM available for the game (XP is memory hog) and because my flight control setup (CH Force FX {14 programmable buttons}, CH Pro Throttle {20 programmable buttons}, CH Pedals) is not recognized in WXP.
I received HALO as a birthday gift. It loaded fine. I ran it and it continually locked up at the main menu screen of the game. The Audio part of the game continued to advance, but the video got stuck. My wife loaded the game and tried to run it and got the same results, she has only WXP for an OS on an MSI K7T 266 Pro 2 RU motherboard. She upgraded her MSI Geforce3 Ti-200 TD Pro drivers from MSI 44.03 to NVIDIA 52.16 and HALO then ran flawlessly.
MSI has upgraded drivers 45.32 and Nvidia has upgraded drivers 45.23. Both of these drivers locked up my machine each and everytime I installed them. My machine runs the NVIDIA 56.12 drivers without any problem on Windows XP PRO. I had to uninstall the MSI 45.32 and/or NVIDIA 45.23 drivers and reload the MSI 44.03 drivers to get WME to boot up. HALO will not run on the 44.03 drivers. One of the techs from microsoft called me at home the last two nights in a row to try and resolve this issue. Conclusion at end of night one was updated video drivers needed to be installed. Conclusion at end of night two was that there was a hardware problem with the the conclusion that video card was not accepting drivers above 44.03 for the Windows Millenium Edition Operating System. There was no listing at either NVIDIA or MSI video driver site for any drivers beyond 44.03 other than NVIDIA 45.23 or MSI 45.32 respectively.
The burning question is this: As with some of the previous NVIDIA drivers are the new releases compatible with all of the operating systems? I ask this because looking in the NVIDIA 52.16 drivers folder that gets extracted I see references in the read me file to W98,W98SE,WME. Why does the MSI Geforce 3 Ti-200 card accept the NVIDIA 52.16 drivers with WXP PRO and not the NVIDIA 45.23 not the MSI 45.32 drivers with WME (and I assume W98 & W98SE?)
Interested in the response.    
Thanks.

Answer 1

Judging from the problems I and several other people on the forum have mentioned, there seems to be a problem with the nVidia 45.23 drivers and video. I get a grey screen with vids unless i turn down the hardware accel to almost nothing. Other people can get vid to show on their tv out. So if you havn't tried an older driver version yet, maybe you could use the good old xp driver rollback in the video device properties.