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Summary

This step-by-step article describes how to force Windows to use a standard VGA mode driver that is included with Windows. This procedure is useful in the following scenario.
If you install Windows on a computer that is using an unsupported video adapter, Windows Setup installs a standard VGA mode driver. However, after you install Windows, you obtain and install a Windows-compatible driver for your video adapter from an original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
In this scenario, the computer may have problems shutting down, or the computer may stop responding (hang). To troubleshoot this problem, you may want remove the new OEM drivers and revert to the standard VGA drivers to determine whether the OEM drivers cause the problem.
This article describes how to remove OEM video drivers and force Windows to use the standard VGA drivers that are included with Windows.

Hardware driver for Cirrus Logic chips: CL-GD542x, CL-GD543x, CL-GD544x, CL-GD546x, CL-GD5480, including qemu emulated CL-GD5446. With 2Mb+ cards 32-bit color modes are supported., Windows NT clones - ALL of them: Debug version. 2009.01.03: IBM Graphics driver works with any IBM EGA/VGA-compatible cards (mono, 16, 256 colors)., Windows NT 4. Update the video driver using the manufacturer’s support site. The product requires an existing video controller (onboard or discrete) from Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA. The video controller must have a WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model), compatible driver. Most video controllers from 2008 or newer will meet this requirement.

Force Windows to Use the Standard VGA Mode Drivers Without Having to Use Safe Mode

When you install an OEM driver, the Windows installer program copies the OEM installation file (Oemsetup.inf) to the %Systemroot%Inf folder. Setup then renames the Oemsetup.inf file to Oemn.inf, where n is an incremental number for each OEM driver that is installed.
To identify the OEM video-specific Oemn.inf file, you can open each Oemn.inf file in Microsoft Notepad, and then compare it with the original Oemsetup.inf file. After you find a match, move that specific Oemn.inf and Oemn.pnf files to a different location, or rename the files with a different file name extension.

After you locate the matching .inf files, move the Oemn.inf and Oemn.pnf to a different folder.
In Device Manager, right-click your video adapter, and then click Uninstall to remove the video adapter.
Restart your computer.
After you log on, you receive a message stating that new hardware has been found and that it is a VGA compatible video controller. The Found New Hardware Wizard starts.
Click Next.
Click Search for suitable driver, and then click Next.
Click to clear all of the search option check boxes, and then click Next.
Click Disable the device, and then click Finish.

After you finish steps 1 through 7, Windows uses the Vga.sys generic video driver. This is the same VGA driver that Windows uses in Safe mode.
If the computer becomes stable or shuts down in a typical manner while you are using the standard VGA driver, you may have to contact the OEM driver vendor to report the problems that you have when you use the OEM driver. You may also have to obtain and install a newer driver (if one is available) that resolves these problems.
To restore the OEM drivers, follow these steps:

Move the Oemn.inf and Oemn.pnf files back to the %Systemroot%Inf folder.
Use Device Manager to remove the VGA video adapter, and then restart the computer.
Windows Plug and Play locates the OEM video adapter and reinstalls the OEM drivers automatically.

NOTE: If you press F8, and then click Enable VGA Mode on the Windows Startup menu, Windows starts with a screen area of 640 by 480 pixels with low 8-bit color and may use an OEM video driver, not the standard VGA driver.

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This project started on May 2004.

Overview

Key features :

The main IDEA of the project was taken from standard XP/2003 VGA.SYS display driver with generic VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE) 1.02/2.00/3.00+ support.
It is a standard Windows NT™ Video Display Driver.
It supports ALL of MS Windows NT™ Family (3.x,4.0,2000(5.0),XP/XPMCE/WFLP 32-bit(5.1),2003 Server 32-bit(5.2)).
Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) is also supported.
It supports a wide range of videocards emulated via virtualization software: Bochs, QEMU, VMware, Innotek VirtualBox, Microsoft VirtualPC.
For proper operation my driver expects that your video card's BIOS is 100%-compatible with VESA Video BIOS extensions specification. Nowadays there are many video cards that don't fully supports INT10 interface, which is provided by VESA/VBE standard (See VBE FAQ below for details).
Supports VBE 2.00+ compliant PCI/AGP/PCI-E video cards with linear frame buffer.
Partially supports VBE 1.x compliant ISA/EISA/MCA/VLB/PCI video cards with linear frame buffer (only S3, Tseng Labs, Cirrus Logic, Trident chips).
Under Windows XP and later, it supports VBE 1.x ISA/EISA/MCA/VLB/PCI video cards with bank switching (Like Intel 810/815 cards, old ISA/MCA/VLB-bus cards). In other cases it is limited to 320x200x8bit mode.
Supports VBE-incompatible EGA/VGA video cards (old ISA/EISA/MCA-bus cards) with bank switching limited to monochrome and 320x200x8bit modes via additional VGA13H driver.
For usermode part of the driver it uses standard framebuf.dll supplied with ANY Windows NT™.
256color(8bit), 15bit (R5G5B5), 16bit (R5G6B5), 24bit, 32bit true color modes support.
From 320x200x8bit to every resolution which your video card's BIOS supports.
Video mode filtering using registry (organized like ATI's DALRestrictedModesBCD key). You can disable unneeded modes using this technique.
Under Windows NT 4.00™ and later, it supports USWC (Uncached Speculative Write Combining) using processor's MTRR registers.
Under Windows 2000™ and later, it supports Advanced Power Management (i.e. Stand by, Hibernation), Monitor & Child Devices Detection. Legacy-type drivers and NT3/NT4 support for these features exist, but it is limited.
Under Windows 2000™ and later, it supports internal Windows GDI Acceleration using shadow buffer. Beta support for Windows NT 4.00™ exists via modified version of framebuf.dll.
VBE 3.00+ support: refresh rate switching (3Dfx, nVidia, Intel video cards for example). Note that in some cases system restart IS REQUIRED for successful change of refresh rate in Windows NT 4.00™/2000™.
Under Windows 2000™ and later, it supports internal Windows support for accelerated Mode-X modes with width of 320 pixels via MODEX.DLL.

Planned features :

Windows NT 3.1 support (in beta now, no 8 bit modes support)
Windows Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC architecture support
Feature to install the driver without reboot
Shadow buffer acceleration support for NT4 (in beta now)
ICM (color management), rotation and zooming support
More than one device for output (display, video out device, flat panel)
2-bit (mono) and 4-bit (16 colors) support for testing purposes only
Old adapters support like EGA, CGA, Hercules etc. for testing purposes only :)

Download drivers

This driver is intended for using in case when your have some new or unknown video card(s) and you don't have drivers for it. It's better to contact manufacturer of your video card or search THE WEB for the drivers. ONLY if you finally cannot find driver for your video card I recommend you to use mine (vbemp.sys). My driver does not provide any kind of 3D hardware acceleration (DirectX & OpenGL). For this purpose third-party libraries can be used.

If your card made by AMD-ATI Technologies and this card is detected as two devices ('Radeon xxxx' and 'Radeon xxxx Secondary') only 'Manual' or 'legacy' version may work with it.

My driver does NOT support mul

Video Controller Vga Compatible Driver