All-in-wonder 9800 display corruption

[PainOfDeath]

Hello,

First time posting here... I am at a total loss with this issue. I have an Asus A8V deluxe board w/ Athlon 64 3500+, ATI AIW 9800 card, creative Audigy 2 ZS Platinum soundcard, with 2 GB of RAM, and a Logitech MX900 mouse.

Originally in this system I had two hard drives, one IDE and one SATA, running Windows XP SP 1 off the IDE drive. I also had a different mobo (P4C800-E Deluxe). No problems with the system.

Then I upgraded the board and CPU - I didn't bother reinstalling Windows at the time (planned on doing it later). The system still ran fine, for months. Then I decided to swap the IDE drive with an identical SATA drive as the other one (Seagate 200 GB) and set it up in a RAID 0 using the onboard VIA VT8237 SATA RAID controller. That went ok, then I installed Windows XP (slipstreamed SP 2) and on the bootup after install, the system locked up. Resetting it didn't help, finally going in safe mode worked OK. Rebooting normally after going in safe mode also worked. Occasionally on cold booting the system would lock up. Sounds like it's a RAID issue right? But then on one occasion, cold booting the system, the Windows XP logo screen had some display corruption just in the area of the little scrolling blue bar, and the system locked up and refused to boot after that.

So I updated the mobo BIOS and reinstalled Windows from scratch, still on the RAID - this time the install took just fine, rebooted normally, no display corruption. I even got all the drivers installed and got Doom 3 running just fine. Then I shut the system down, go to sleep, next day I start it up and get the SAME display corruption and refusal to boot. Going into Windows in safe mode, and the whole screen is messed up - vertical stripes across the screen, scrambled colours - I could barely make out anything but I was able to uninstall the ATI Catalyst drivers. Rebooting, I still had the display corruption on the Windows logo screen, plus the same corruption in Windows (not in safe mode this time) - however after about a minute the screen goes black and the system won't respond. I should note there was never any display corruption in the pre-OS screens (i.e. BIOS setup, ASUS boot logo, etc.). Also, on one occasion (with the new mobo but prior to setting up the RAID) on cold booting the system I got an error message saying the video card bios is corrupt, and asking me to insert a disk with the correct bios. A shut down and restart seemed to resolve it.

If anyone has any idea why this would happen, I mean it's working and then suddenly it's not working, please help! I am at my wit's end as you can probably tell by my writing. As I said, on my last install the system was working FLAWLESSLY, I even installed and played two levels of Doom 3, until I shut it down and restarted it the following day. Is there perhaps a BIOS update for the AIW card? I am using the latest drivers for EVERYTHING (chipset, CPU, sound, all peripherals, RAID controller, etc.). I am also not overclocking anything at all. I have set up a RAID 0 in this manner before using the same chipset for a coworker, w/ Windows XP SP 2, without any problems.

Thanks for any assistance.

 

[ski]

Reseat the video card making sure it's fully seated, check that it's fan is running and free of any dust build up, and its heatsink is secure and free of any dust build up.
If those are ok, then see if another video card fixes things. If so, then yours is probably bad.

If the video card is ok, then check the CPU and system temperatures either in BIOS or with a MB monitoring utility.
If the former is 60 C or higher and/or the latter is 40 C or higher, then your CPU and/or system needs more powerful/efficient cooling.
If you cannot check the temps, then remove the computer's cover, and run an external fan. If that helps, then you have an overheating problem.

If overheating is not the cause, then check the MB for any bulging, leaking, or ruptured capacitors.

If they look ok, then swap out the power supply, MB, CPU, and RAM.