Radeon 9100 installation Help

[nocturnx]

Im puttin a Sapphire Radeon 9100 Atlantis into my moms comp and when i try to install the drivers, both from the packaged disc and from the ati website, I get an error: "Setup was unable to complete installation. Try to setup your display with a standard VGA driver before running setup. " What does this mean? btw im running Win XP.

[MonkeyBlitch]

Install the drivers from the CD then uninstall the control panel (do not restart) and ati display driver then restart. Install the new display driver (don't restart) and the control panel. Reboot. It should be working now.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Did you remove the previous video card drivers prior to installing the new card?

[ssahl]

good call krusader, that will always make for less headaches, uninstall all of them and start from scratch. sometimes you need to install generic vga drivers first, you can boot with card installed and let windows find driver (not from cd) then reboot and install drivers from cd.

[nocturnx]

It wont even let me completely install the catylist drivers because it says "setup was unable to compleyte installation" so i cant uninstall the control panel....there is nothing to uninstall. I had a GeForce 2 64Mb card in it previously and i removed the software with the wizard and then used regedit to completely make sure the driver was out. I tried letting windows detect it and install its own driver but it just recognizes the card as a Radeon 9100 and says to input the packaged disc to continue setup, otherwise it cancels setup....Im completely stumped, i even tried d/l different catalyst drivers. Any other ideas?????

[ssahl]

delete it from the device manager, then reboot and try to install, maybe also try going into bios and checking to see that fast write is disabled (till you get it going at least) and it's looking in the right place for display, could also try to update direct x
this wouldnt happen to be a GeForce 2 mx-400 and win98 would it?

[nocturnx]

Its WinXP and im not sure what GeForce 2 it was but anyway, after messing with it for a few hours a got frustrated...freaked out....yelled #$%@ and *!&% alot, and popped the Recovery CD-rom in, totally reinstalled windows fresh, and now its letting me install the Radeon 9100 drivers but when i restart the comp it gives me an error saying the system was shutdown because of the Radeon 9100 device, so i messed with that awhile and then popped the recovery cd-rom back in, totally reinstalled windows, and now its givin me a different error every time i start it up and this is without any other software installed (even without vid drivers) The error says : Error Signature BCCode:100000ea BCP1:824DA8 BCP2:829CE248
BCP3:82BDE420 BCP4: 00000001 OSVer: 5_1_2600
SP:0_0 Product 768_1
Files Included in error report:
C:\\Windows\minidump\mini071203-01.dmp
C:\\Docume~1\Susanc~1.cla\locals~1\temp\wer1.tmp.dir00\sysdata.xml

Its also locking up and restarting on its own every once in awhile, i dont think its heat, the case feels quite cool. Should i just reformat the HDD and go buy a copy of windows and burn the dang recovery cd? The recovery cd keeps me from repartioning the hdd for some reason.

[ssahl]

Yea, reinstalling with those problems isnt going to help much without reformting the drive. I dont know why the recovery cd doesnt let you repartition the hdd, but you could maybe try using a floppy boot disk to do that then try the recovery cd again, that way you know that theres nothing on the drive at all and everything will be totally fresh. If you still have problems, well I could only guess, maybe someone else here would know more, but a compleate fresh install on a totally clean drive is the thing to do now at this point.

[ssahl]

Just to let you know, I have a Radeon 9100 128MB card in my system right now, and it works great, and installed without any problems at all on win98, winXP, and even linux, so unless it's a defective card I dont think the problem is with the card itself.

[nocturnx]

alright so I took the computer back to my apartment with me and set it up exactly the way it was before except i hooked up my monitor to it and its working fine. Could it be that my moms monitor was causing the drivers not to install and cause the system to freeze, crash, and reboot itself??? Seems alittle strange but i havent changed anything else to it.

[Nuclear Krusader]

A monitor does not mess with drivers as you suggest.

[nocturnx]

yes, but what about the freezing and rebooting, can a monitor cause that?

[ssahl]

no, not really

[Nuclear Krusader]

I'm suspecting this is a defective card. Maybe you can test it in another system or take it to the store where you bought it for testing?

[pam123]

I've had an interesting few weeks with a computer that was behaving alot like the one your mom has.
What turned out to be the problem was a slowly dieing power supply ( it's fine now, I bought a new Antec this afternoon ). This I figured out after testing the HD, testing the ram, messing with the ACPI, and so on.
It was just the sort of discovery that makes you feel really dumb.
I would wonder about the power at your mom's place.
If the card continues to behave at your apartment she may need a UPS.

[nocturnx]

Ok, i installed the new catalyst 3.6 drivers and the freezing continued. So i switched over to the Omega drivers and havent had any trouble yet.

[nocturnx]

doh, as soon as i posted that last post the computer screen just went black...it dont think its the card, its doing the samething it was doing when i had the geforce 2 in it, thats why i got the radeon 9100. could it be the agp slot? motherboard? i installed motherboard monitor to see if it was a heat problem, im getting 54 C sitting idle, im not sure if thats the case temp or the cpu temp tho.

[pam123]

54C idle ?
Take off the sides of the case and train a fan on it.
If it behaves you have a heat problem.
What power supply do you have in it ?

[ssahl]

Now I too suspec the power supply, it could be the motherboard too, i dont think it's heat related.

[nocturnx]

Hmm yea i didnt even think it could be the PSU but it could be. Is there anyway to test the PSU to see if that is whats failing? I think the one that is in it is a AHEAD 350 watt PSU, ill check again when i get home tho.

[pam123]

I've never heard of AHEAD which may, or may not, mean anything.
The usual recommended ps are Antec,Enermas and Sparkle.
Is it possible for you to switch out with your ps for a test?
That would answer the question in short order.

I meant Enermax.

[nocturnx]

yea the brand is AHEAD ver 2.03 350 watt, some genero brand thats probly what it is. Good suggestion ill swap the psu with an old computers' when i go back home this sunday. Thanks

[pam123]

Waiting for the results.

[nocturnx]

I havent tried putting a different psu in yet but heres the error its given me when crashing. "The driver for the display device was unable to complete a drawing operation. The display driver for Radeon 9100 Series (Omega2.4.60) seems to be responsible for the system instability." Still think its the psu? Ive tried quite a few different drivers.

[pam123]

That's one of the errors I get.
Have you e-mailed tech support at ATI ?

[nocturnx]

You get that error too? I emailed ATi tech support and Sapphire tech support. Now ill just sit back and wait for a response.

[andyms18a]

check the moniter refresh rate some times it defults to 80 or 100 mh you nead to reset to 65/70 as a refresh rate thats to high for you mums monitor can cause the problams you have