VIA chipsets & WinXP, what's the story?

[Lando2]

For the last few hrs or so, I've been trailing around loads of busy forums on the net. I keep seeing again and again, the same issues relating to Windows XP and various VIA chipsets (Randon Reboots, ACPI errors, BSODs, NV4 Loops - the list goes on) These aren't just related to AMD or INTEL setups, its happening to many people (me included)

If you goto any Motherboard makers forums (msi/abit for starters) there's at least 1 or 2 treads on each page with people pulling their hair out over this issue... What I dont see is any definate fixes for the company techs, all I see are helpful people trying there best to help, but mainly just clutching at straws.

I thought it was just an Nvidia issue, which it mainly is, but that's probably only because most people now have Nvidia products (plus intel based chipsets have no problems with XP and Nvidia). So it boils down to a microsoft/via problem. What I dont see is anyone from via or MS having the same problem as their users. As it's so widespread, `they` have to know about it, but we dont see any official statements coming from anyone.

I know many people dont have a problem and XP is working just fine for them (as it does for me on my main PC (KT7a + WinXP) But rumours are spreading and professionals are advising users to stay away from XP and VIA chipsets. I personally wouldn't advise any non-technical person to upgrade to XP over say 2000 or Windows ME, as it seems very hit and miss if it'll work or not.

We want answers, we want patches, we want to our PCs to work properly.

 

[Guest_imported]

I'm tired of this problem. Got a SOYO Dragon + MOBO with an Asus V8200 deluxe (GeForce 3). Was getting NV4_loop for about 3 weeks now. Cruising the posts everywhere - tried everything (one at a time) - no solutions yet. So I tried something different: Take out V8200 and replaced with old ViperTNT2 Ultra (another Nvidia product). Result: same crashes nv4 loop!!!! I'm starting to think (and hope I'm wrong) that its the VIA chipset thats iffy.

I'm tired of this, can some tech out there tell me the source of this problem?

My next thing is another (cheaper) video card (like a radeon 7500) and then if that doesn't work, then a new MOBO without the Via chipset. Expensive mistake isn't it??

Good luck everybody.

 

[MikeCSr]

I must be lucky... I've been running WinXP and a Geforce card for about 3 months and have not once ever had a hang, a NV_loop or BSOD in any game nor application. I do run the 4.35 4 in 1 drivers for the chipset and I use the 23.11 Detonator drivers.

I run a
AMD Athlon 1800 XP CPU
Epox EP8K7A+ mobo (AMD 761 686B chipset)(VIA)
512MB PC2100 DDR Ram
VisionTec GF3 Video card
WinXP Pro (Final)

 

[DavidPaul]

Hmmm, if only this problem would go away. I really do hate this. I get ACPI errors a lot and the reset that it causes makes me loose work which really annoys me.
I have a VIA chipset/Jetway GeForce 2 MX 32Mb/XP Pro Final.

 

[varcoris]

hmm... I'm looking at MikeCSr's specs and wondering if this is a northbriddge problem. with MikeCSr running an AMD 761 northbridge he has no errors, whereas I suspect most of us are running VIA northbridges ... As for me I get these errors a lot to, BSOD, NV4_disp.dll, etc,etc.
AMD Thunderbird 1GHz
ASUS AV7133 mobo (VIA North and South)
512 MB RAM
30GB HDD
Hercules Prophet II MX (32 MB GeForce 2MX)
Win XP Pro (Final)

 

[rjkrash]

Folks,

I solved my nVidia problems on an HP by doing the following:

Got the program NVmax from

http://www.nvmax.com

Used it to:

turn off sideband addressing
turn off fastwrites
set AGP appature to 64 or less

problems went away. didn't hurt performance either.
The two rules for success are:
1. Never tell them everything you know.

 

[Lando2]

"turn off sideband addressing
turn off fastwrites
set AGP appature to 64 or less"

Well that may work, but it would only be a quick fix and it would make performance suffer, if it didn't then why would those enhancements be available (turned on) in the first place. Someone with over 256 of memory benefits from 128 AGP appature and sidebanding and fastwrites would add about 500 to your 3Dmark2001 score with a GF3.

FUnny I dont see hardly any Abit boards suffering.

 

[MovingTarget]

Typical VIA


I'm getting a system delivered today and now i'm not looking forward to it

 

[Lando2]

Nah dont worry, chances are you'll be ok, it's probably only about 5% of users complaining, that's why via can't put there finger on what's wrong, as they can't produce the errors in their labs so they say.

 

[MovingTarget]

Cool

Happy again

 

[varcoris]

Well, I tried rjkrash's idea and it seemed to work for a while, till 30 minutes ago my computer rebooted again. It does seem to have reduced the frequency though. Well, guess I will keep searching, maybe when NVidia releases its new drivers for the Geforce 4 it will include a solution...

 

[putergeek]

Listen everyone. It's not just a VIA issue. I have the ECS K7S5A board that someone above says will fix it because it doesn't use the VIA chipset - it uses the SIS735 chipset. And guess what? I get the error too. No 3d anything for me on XP. I dual boot my system with XP Home and W2K pro. My W2K pro partition works fine which proves my hardware is fine.

The problem is not with nvidia or VIA. The problem can happen on intel mobos, sis mobos, via mobos, it can happen on ati cards, nvidia cards or any other kind of graphic card. It IS a Microsoft XP problem. At this point & time, there doesn't appear to be a solution that fixes it for everyone. Some people can disable certain features, some can do reinstalls and get it working. Others try everything and nothing works. Another good forum to checkout is

http://www.icronticforums.com.

They've got 100's of posts regarding this. I wrote support@microsoft.com and told them about my frustrations. I would suggest you do the same. They're a big corporation and probably won't fix this until they hear enough griping. Also, advise everyone you can to NOT upgrade to XP until this is fixed. Maybe losing a little $ will light a fire under M$'s butt.

 

[djkj]

I have an ECS K7S5A with Tornado TNT2 card and I suffer problems too. When I run the 3DMark2000 benchmark program it often won't complete the run - it just returns to the xp desktop without any warning. It also sometimes freezes when I close down or restart as soon as the "restarting windows" or "closing down" message appears. Under Windows Me I have no problems running the same software ( on another HDD). I've downloaded all of the (supposedly) correct drivers & updates as well. I'm convinced it is an xp problem so come on MS, get your fingers out and sort this darn problem out !!!

 

[rjkrash]

I read/heard that a few users have discovered a more stable environment if they change from the default Windows XP Theme to the Windows Classic theme. You lose the "pretty" but you also lose the BSDs. And I found that when I had the problem on my HP I could reproduce the BSD by running the XP PLUS Aquarium screen saver. This says to me that the issue is at MS doing something funky/buggy with graphics. I'll bet it is DirectX that is causing the problems.
If pro is the opposite of con, what's the opposite of Congress?

 

[varcoris]

Direct X would only be an issue if there were seperate versions of it for different versioins of windows, however DirectX 8.1 is the same for Win2000 and WinXP. Stands to reason if it works in Win2000 it is fine. I my self dual boot into Win2k Pro and WinXP Pro. In WinXp I get BSOD's all the time and yet Win2k runs fine. Same software installed, same hardware. The difference? Windows. Pure and simple. WindowsXP is what is at fault here. How and why I don't know but a simple process of elimination gives you WindowsXP. So lets all raise a glass, get drunk and hope MS issues a patch for this soon.

 

[Arion23]

Just thought I'd share my experience with this same problem: I've got an Asus A7v266-E M/B, X-Micro GF3Ti500 video card and I've been running XP Pro for a couple of weeks.

The first few days were nothing but trouble - crashing, loops etc. and I spent countless hours trying all the fixes and workarounds that people had suggested.

In the end, I did a clean install of Windows XP, but instead of using the vendor drivers, I updated the system using Windows Update - from this I installed an updated Athlon driver, as well as drivers for the video card (which seem to be 23.12 Detonators). I didn't touch BIOS, or the VIA AGP drivers at all.

Since then I've had no problems whatsoever with games or office apps - and the PC is usually running 8-20 hours per day.