nv4_disp.dll driver stuck in infinite loop.

[caravel]

I thought Windoze versions from 2k or XP upwards no longer messed up lilo/grub...

Unfortunately XP still seems to overwrite grub as far as I can tell. Vista probably does the same. The problem is that if XP installs and doesn't overwrite the bootloader then it cannot boot, nor can it manipulate the grub loader to add an entry for it self, so the boot loader is lost (equivalent of doing a fdisk /mbr from win9x or a fixboot or fixmbr from Win32. Simple as that really. The only way to get it working if it did install without overwriting would be to go into /boot/grub/menu.lst and edit it manually, adding a line for XP, but that's a moot point.

Also, IIRC, you can relatively easy re-write grub even if it gets messed up, as long as you either have some installation disk (you could make a floppy, but floppies (drives and/or disks) have kinda disappeared...). I don't know if Ubuntu actually explicitly offers the option to re-write/reinstall grub in its installation menu, but even if it doesn't, you can just run grub-install. It's not _too_ inconvenient.

Yep, this is why I still have a floppy drive - just in case. Rather than rewrite grub I'll probably install 9x to another HDD then add it to grub afterwards. This way I can keep everything on my other HDD as is. My TW games are on FAT32 partitions anyway, I took the liberty of moving stuff around, resizing partitions and doing that so that I could access them from Win9x if I did decide to install it.

I like the idea about trying win98
How do you plan to force the install for your card, though ?

I will probably give it a go. The installation can be forced by adding a line to the .inf file to represent the card and it's device ID. This will cause the old driver to be recognised by plug and play as the driver for the card. It will probably install, though whether it will actually work is another matter.

I can't help with your general issues, but iirc the problem with MTW is a problem quite a few people, including myself, get. It's some issue related to drivers being too new for the game or some such rubbish, which can't be cured without reverting to older drivers.

That's what I thought, but exactly the same crash occurs with RTW. I may have a go with even older drivers later, who knows. I now think there may be a few version I haven't tried.