Issue Loading ROMS w/ MAME32

[flampoo]

Is this a common problem? One one of my computers MAME32 will load but as soon as I select a game the screen freezes with "garbage" and I have to reboot. I'm running a 500MHz PII with 256MB RAM and a primitive Trident 4MB grapics card on Win98SE. Maybe a drivers issue?
I also thought that maybe running a command line version of MAME with a FE would work as well. Any suggestions?

[SirPeale]

What game are you trying to run, or is this all games?

[flampoo]

It's all the games. And they're all pre-1990. Nothing too taxing on the computer.

[SirPeale]

On board graphics/sound?  Version of DirectX you're using?

Also, yes, do try the command line version.

[flampoo]

I've narrowed down the issue... I've got DirectX 7 loaded on the machine. When I run a display test on DirectDraw and it gets to the fullscreen test, the screen goes to garbage.
I reboot, repeat the process except instead of running the DirectDraw test I run the Direct3D test. It immediately goes to garbage.
For some reason I can't install version 8 (the file is always corrupt, even after different downloads from different sites) and because this is a stand alone pc I can't use the websetup version.
I get the same results when running MAME32 and any command line version of MAME. However, I considered turning off the DirectDraw and Direct3D rendering from the command line version. What will happen then?

Am I missing something?

[SirPeale]

You considered doing it, but acutally haven't done it?  It's just a checkbox, you know.  You can always recheck it.