Biostar M6VLR MB w/onboard Video: mouse cursor turns into black square

[gtmurphy]

I am having a nagging issue with the socket 370 everything onbard micro-atx Biostar M6VLR MB. My business uses these in all our low end workstations. I am curious to see if anyone has come accross this issue before.

I'm running this system at a Resolution of 1280 X 1024 16 bit color, but I have tried lower resolutions and the problem remains the same. It is a SIS onboard video chip with 8 MB shared Video RAM (this is the max.) After about 20 minutes to an hour of activity, the cursor turns into a big black square when you mouse over text, and the screen gets distorted in the left hand corners. If you try to play video files, odd ghost-shadow lines appear on the screen until you close the video. Upon a reboot, the screen goes back to normal, but the problem reoccurs in 20 minutes to an hour. I have tried reducing my color depth and get the same results. I have also tried updating the BIOS to the newest version, updating the SIS onboard video drivers, swapping out RAM and other devices, and different operating systems (windows XP, 2000, and ME.)

This problem is widespread, we have had several customers with the same motherboard reporting the same problems. I have even had a few of the motherboards RMA'd back to biostar and the problem happened with a completely new motherboard. I am at my wits end. I know this is a crappy motherboard, but the price and the onboard devices make it perfect for low end workstations, so we really don't want to change hardware. If anyone knows anything, please reply.

 

[apex1x]

I've never seen this problem in particular, but have you tried adding a PCI or AGP video card to see how it works?

It sounds like some drivers are corrupt for that to happen. It seems like you've done the basics already though (updated vid, BIOS, and chipset drivers).

Try playing with your BIOS and turning down any features (video in particular) that are not needed.

Also, in Windows, try turning down graphics hardware acceleration down a notch or two. ~Apex1x
Miller's Law:
You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step into it.

 

[gtmurphy]

Thanks for the ideas. I went ahead and dropped the hardware acceleration down so that it does not accelerate cursor animations and the like. We'll see. This isn't the ideal fix, because I should like for these systems to run at full acceleration. But anything is better than our customers seeing the dreaded black box instead of a mouse cursor.

As for installing the video card, I'm sure this would solve the problem, but there is no AGP slot on these boards so it would have to be PCI, and it kind of defeats the economy of an "everything built in" motherboard to have to install a video card in every machine. We pump out about 60-75 of these units a month. I'm hoping that somebody at Biostar can return one of my calls or e-mails, because this is probably some kind of video driver bug and they need to release new drivers to take care of it.

I know that you can't really expect much from an all-in-one board, but for what it's worth, the Biostars have been the best we've used so far. Until this issue popped up. I just need to get some fresh ideas, so I posted this thread up. Plus, I haven't found any information on this problem, so I figured I might as well be the first to say something about it so others would know.

Thanks for your insight. I'll let you know what happens.