AGP Texture Accleration Not Available...?

[Loafman]

I have a problem with a new PC I built. It is running WinXP, 2.26 ghz P4, 512 meg of ram, ATI All in wonder radeon 8500 with 128 meg of ram on an ASUS P4b533 motherboard.

I ran DXDIAG recently and noticed that the AGP Texture Acceleration says "Not Available"...? Can anyone tell me if there is a good utility to run that might help me find clues as to whether it is a bios setting or driver problem?

Any thoughts are GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!

[HackinCowboy]

SiSoftware Sandra (http://www.sisoftware.demon.co.uk/sandra/) is a really good diagnostics program. It's also very accurate. I'm not familiar with DXDIAG so I can't say how accurate it is, but you could try SiSoftware Sandra to maybe get a second "opinion".

[Loafman]

Sorry, I should have explained. DXDIAG is the MS DirectX diagnostics utility. From everything I have read, I should have this setting enabled, but for some reason I is listed as not available. I did notice that my agp video card is sharing an irq with the USB host controller...?

IRQ 16 ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500 OK
IRQ 16 Standard Universal PCI to USB Host Controller OK

I am going to try to change this so the video card is using its own IRQ....

I am going to download the software you mentioned and post back my results. Thanks for your help!

[Loafman]

That Software you told me about did the trick. The AGP slot was not enabled correctly! Thank you for the tip! I think I may buy the pro version of that software!

I just wanted to say that this is the second time that the forums here have helped me out in a big way since I first started building this PC (my first)!!! Thanks again!! :)

[gladiator]

Hey loafman
I think I maybe having the same trouble.
I formated and installed my OS but soon as I installed the video drivers for my ATI rage 128 card the screen goes blank for some reason I can't get it to boot with the AGP slot enabled I've tried different sequences to no avail how did u enable your AGP slot to see your card??:mad:
I do get a DXD error message I tried to upgrade my directx to 8,1 but I can't do that either It gives me a .inf file missing message??

When windows boots up the screen(monitor) shuts down but I can hear windows running and the HD light is on? looks like the monitor goes into DMPS mode and shuts down

[Nuclear Krusader]

You guys can also check out these proggies. See this thread (http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?threadid=34883&highlight=freshdevices)

[Loafman]

I think my problem was slightly different than yours. My problem was that everything "seemed" to be fine, it's just that the AGP slot was being "used" as a PCI slot. I had to install the AGP chipset drivers that came with my motherboard CD. This is one of the few things that was not in the documentation that came with my motherboard, and in fact, the installation cd didnt even list this software, although it was buried on the CD in one of the subfolders. I already had my radeon XP drivers installed and working just fine. I wouldnt have known that my AGP slot was not being used properly if I did not run DXDIAG... The sandra software helped me verify that the AGP slot was not configured correctly (other suggestions from ATI were to reinstall drivers, directX, bios etc).

Are there newer drivers that you may be able to use for your vid card?

[gladiator]

Did you buy the sandra program?
I got the updated drivers for the ATI expert 128 card but it says I need to upgrade my Directx first , so when I try to install Direct x8.1 I get a error message saying a .inf file is missing.

I did upgrade my AGP driver set first.

My dxdiag says I'm running directx5.0 but the video card needs 6 at least it says.

so all you did to enable your AGP slot was to install your AGP drivers, was this a new comp you built or just a new video card?:confused:

[Loafman]

No, I didnt buy the sandra program, but the shareware version did tell me that the AGP Bus was either not enabled, or not in use, which clued me into the fact that the chipset drivers for the AGP slot were not installed... I may be butchering this explanation, since I am far from an expert at this stuff...

PS: This was a new PC I built from scratch.

Couple of questions:

What OS are you running?

What is the exact error message you are receiving about the missing inf file?

FYI: I am running Windows XP which comes with DirectX 8.1 automatically. So I didnt have to install DirectX

[gladiator]

Your explaination is just fine

I using windows98 first edition, which is my first mistake :(

I just sent away for a copy of XPhome version from www.directron.com. OEM version for 91 bucks

as for the error message I wish it would tell me more all is says is there is a missing .INF and cannot install directx. I'm gonna try to install dirx7.0 and see if that will work.

A couple good websites are
www.pcmech.com
www.pricewatch.com
www.newegg.com

[gladiator]

well I got 7.0 directx to install withoout any problems

But I still can't use 256 or 16high colors inthe display, if I do the monitors shuts off. so I ran dxdiag and it told me that my directdraw is not supported I get an error code 0x887600de.

I been all over the microsoft website looking for a Hotfix for win98fe but to no avail I guess I'll tryagain tomorrow.

[gladiator]

Ok I got it

Thanks to Ron Baldour, on reading a different thread he told us how to go back and restore an old regristry. Before that I kept reformatting and reinstalling OS.

So anyway once I got the system booting up again in normal mode I had to update the AGP drivers for my motherboard. which was not easy , because when I downloaded(unzipped) them to a disk from another comp that had online access and tried to install in the new comp i got an win32 error message,

HMMM what do I do now I thought ?? ok I redownloaded the AGP drivers, still zipped to the disk, I had to install winzip first to the new comp, then I unzipped the AGP drivers on the new comp and installed them and that worked?? success finally ,then my ATI drivers worked fine.

Where theres a will there's a way!!