Friend recently reformatted, need help!

[whr2206]

Hey all...

Well my friend is off at college and he decided to reformat. If I were there, I could get better details of what is actually going on but I will try to explain as best as possible.

Here are his specs first off
Antec 400watt psu w/ generic case
Abit AA8xe mobo
Intel 3.0ghz w/ HT 775
1gb Mircon DDR 400 Ram
Some Sapphire x300se pci-e card w/ Catalyst 6.1 drivers
80gb WD SATA hd
Floppy
Windows XP SP2

**He has JUST reformatted and reinstalled drivers... I think he did something wrong with installing drivers...

He's got a few problems that I couldn't fix over the phone...
- When he plays games he says a few minutes into playing a message comes up mentioning his 3d accelerator and saying it will now revert to software mode (Instead of OpenGL or Direct3d I guess) and the game will basically freeze up.
- Sometimes after restarting his computer, the computer just hangs at the Windows XP loading screen and doesn't go into windows, but sometimes it will go into windows. It seems like it just at random will load windows... and other times just won't load windows.

Sorry that this is kind of vague... but I don't have too much information to go on... If you have any suggestions I will tell him to help further diagnose the problem... So is there something wrong hardware related or did he probbaly mess something up with the installation of drivers? Any suggestions?

thanks!

**BTW I didn't know what forum this would go under so I posted it here

[Dia]

Yea that sounds weird. Personally i would have him reformat over the phone with me and walk him through getting all the correct drivers and all that stuff. and then see if it does the same situation.

But before he formats make sure you can find all the correct drivers for the hardware.

I personally wouldnt bother trying to find the exact bug, but would reformat and have him do it correctly this time with guidance.

[glc]

Try uninstalling the 6.1 Cats and installing the drivers that came with the video card. There's no way you are gonna get a X300SE to be a hardcore gaming card anyway - so go for stability rather than the last bit of performance you can.

[whr2206]

Originally Posted by glc Try uninstalling the 6.1 Cats and installing the drivers that came with the video card. There's no way you are gonna get a X300SE to be a hardcore gaming card anyway - so go for stability rather than the last bit of performance you can.

Yeah... he only does very light gaming anyways. We tried the drivers on the CD first... had the problem... then I told him to install the Cats with no success. I have a feeling he messed up installing the drivers somewhere down the line. He used both the Abit utility cd and the cd that came with his video card... But I guess he messed something up.