Geforce 2 MX 400 Ready to give up - ALMOST

[noridetoolow]

OK, I hope yall can keep up. I bought a new Geforce 2 MX 400 64 MB SDRAM AGP card. I used it to replace my trusty Matrox G400. It took me about 2-3 hours the first night to set the card up. I started with the latest drivers from Nvidia. After going around the world, I had success with GLSETUP. Heres what happened about a week later. My PC locked up durring my opengl screen saver. When I reset the PC it came up in 640x480 16 colors. It has done that and more for 2 months now. Sometimes it just comes up as I just mentioned and everything seems to be working. If I go to change settings it will not allow any higher than 16bit color at 640x480 but if I try to select that my PC just locks up. Sometimes it will boot and tell me that there are problems with my display settings and reboot to the 640x480 16 color mode. It usually takes me about 2-3 hours trying various different drivers or whatever to finally get everything back to normal. Sometimes my PC will stop just at the point where windows is popping up on the screen. Sometimes it just freezes and I can CRTL ALT DEL to reset, sometimes I have to hit my reset button ( which my case actually has ). I started with Win ME, went to XP Pro, then back to a fresh install of ME and now am back on 98 1st ED. After a couple weeks of the same probs on 98 I downloaded all Microsoft Updates and that just cause my PC to lock up within a few minutes of rebooting. I dealt with that for just a day and then went back to my Matrox. Wehn I booted with the Matrox after loading drivers my PC found tons of new hardware ( stuff that was already installed mice, keyboard etc). I took that as a good sign and put my Geforce back in. Well I thought I was good but it didnt last long. When it works, it works great. Games play well and everything is good. But the screensaver will locl up or windows will and when I reboot...back to 16 colors. I have been through my BIOS a million times and have gone through optimal and fail safe defaults and have modified items individually. Set to AGP 2X or 4X, everything. I have FULLY DELETED and reinstalled drivers. From the manufactures CD to Nvidia 30 - 40.72 latest drivers. Have tried regular Geforce and Detonator drivers. I have worked in the PC industry and have NEVER seen any crap like this before. I downloaded and ran MOTHERBOARD MONITOR with all tests to check everything and all tests passed. I was thinking maybe bad Video ram or such. When in 16 colors or back to my Matrox. All is well. Its only when I get the Geforce running under drivers that I have any PC problems. here are my PC Specs
ECS K7S6A MB ( SIS 745 chipset )
128 MC DDR ram
1100 AMD Athlon 200 FSB
13GB West Dig 7200 RPM hd
1.6 WD Hd
48x CD
32x rewriter
Kingston NIC card PCI
( only AGP, NIC and Sound - no other cards )
Tried both onboard and my Diamond Monster 300MX sound
Had an antient 20" monitor but suspected it so went to a not so old 17"
I am looking for a good util to check the video card as I still feel thats it. 3 OSs and each with a fresh Fdisk\format\install. Same problem every time. I have not had the funds to buy another card to test and I bought this one on ebay and cannot find the seller now. It was a few months back so is no longer listed. Its a cheap no name brand card EAGLE - I have found the web site but it sucks. ANY HELP!!!!!!!

 

[gargouille]

Boot to Safe Mode and look at the video section...don't be surprised if there are multiple entries. If there are, there are a couple of choices:
Delete them all and go thru discovery/reinstall...delete all but one and reboot.
I'd wipe them all out and start fresh, the one left may not be a solid install.

Have you run thru gamers groups to see what drivers ppl are using? I'd trust nVidia's drivers more than others...and am surprised XP's native drivers didn't work.

Speaking of drivers, you did load the SIS chipset drivers?

Further troubleshooting is booting to F8 and choose bootlog.txt and hope it fails. Then do it again, and when you get into the OS look at the log...the last line will be where it failed to load something...likely the video drivers.

Tried loading them in Safe Mode?

Another thing I'd try is Start/Run/dxdiag and run all the tests...remembering that if something fails in the test, you can sometimes disable then reenable it and it'll work.

IF you get it up and running right...do a Start/Run/scanreg and it'll ask you if you want to back up the registry. Do that a number of times. (hopefully none but good registry records will exist.)

Make one last trip to Device Manager and make sure there are no yellow exclamation points beside anything.
Sound cards, of course, can conflict with video cards.

 

[agh42]

I havE ALMOST EXACTLY THE PROBLEM AS ABOVE EXCEPT i CAN ONLY BOOT TO 4 OR 8 BIT VIDEO. tO BOOT THE pc i HAVE TO HIT F8 AT STARTUP AND CHOOSE vga mODE OR sAFE mODE OR THE pc FREEZES. OOps (Cap lock) In the VGA mode it will only boot to 4 or 8 bit. In safe mode it will boot tro 32 bit true color 800X600, 1024X768 or whatever. I have removed the drivers (all of them) removed the card in decice Mgr. rebooted and have the same problem. I have tried all of the fixes in the threads above. The only reason I bought the GeForce card is the MOBO says It requires a 1.5v video card ir I would have used my Blade 3D card.

Win XP Pro w/ SP1
Athlon 1900 XP
256 Meg DDR
ASUS A7V8X Brand new
MSI Geforce2 MX 200 16Meg. ahows up in properties as.
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200 16MB.
Simbios SCSI card for my scanner Bios disabled on card.
Sound, Ethernet and USB 2.0 on MOBO.

I am desperate for help on this problem. After doing a little checking this problem does not appear to be uncommon.
Is there a trouble free 1.5v Video card out there that is reasonable. I am not a gamer.

Thanls
AL

 

[gargouille]

agh42:

I'm surprised WinXP's native drivers didn't work...as that's been my experience anyway...and in some cases the XP drivers are better (maybe older, more stable).

Your system may well be one of those that needs a backup of important stuff...format/reinstall.

Many even on this group will attest that's the way to fix problems like the 1 you're having...especially if you did an "upgrade" install...not a clean one.

I know that's not something any of us wants to hear...and we start looking for ways to ease that pain.

WinXP is the ideal OS to utilize drive imaging and burning to a bootable CD...and there are many sources of info available about it on the web.
Then if you've done it and have a problem with the OS, you just pop in the bootable CD, format and reinstall the image to the hard drive.

 

[agh42]

I think I fixed it. I removed the MOBO battery Removed the jumper and cleared the RTC RAM. (c-Mos I think) I reinstalled the battery and rebooted. I reset the BIOS settings but this time set the PCI/VGA Pallet Snoop to ENABLE. I than continued booting. I hit the F8 Key and selected VGA Mode or boot to VGA Mode. It booted and finally BINGO. Every thing is working perfectly. I hope this helps. If it does please let me know.

AL

 

[vipez]

noridetoolow,

Try getting PowerStrip(a video card config tool, which can be used to overclock your video card). I've notice similar problems with the Eagle GeForce 2 MX400 agp card of mine(32MB), I fixed it by lowering the GPU mhz, I changed it from 200mhz to 180mhz and also changed the RAM speed from 166mhz to 155mhz, this seems to have helped.