upgrading video driver

[BackBreaka]

so, when i upgrade my radeon video driver, all kinds of things start to freeze or lock up my machine

if i use the driver from XP for the card it seems to run ok, but there is the problem of no opengl driver with it.

when i use windows updated driver IE starts to freeze up when i use the scroll wheel. if i update to the ati driver everything starts to freeze up IE, device manager, video games.....

this all happend about 2 months ago, it ran trouble free for about a year.

have tried diff agp cards to no avail, when the prob is occuring i switch to a pci card and all is good

dont really want to stay with the pci card (16 mg) because its from other puter agp is 64 mg (dont think its this card because others do the same)

is the prob the agp slot?? the motherboard?? the HD??

[grasshopperbe]

do you still have your older drivers somewhere?
I had a similar problem when i upgraded my detonator drivers(gf2mx200,win98) about a month ago.
also it gave heavy graphic errors in games
(nolf2) i unstalled the new driver, reinstalled my older one, and all was ok again. (i only upgraded cuz it was 'very recommended' in the game manual)
Did your older drivers give any problems?
if they work fine i'd keep em
(but that's just my opinion though)

[FantasySoul]

I guess it's the AGP 4X thing..Try setting 2X
I got myself into this mess before.

[Spyda]

thats wierd that is, i was just talking to someone with the exact same problem, he got it to work by installing the NT4 drivers, got openGL and everything

[BackBreaka]

ya, i have tried the original drivers that came with the video card, but i seem to remember them saying not valid with xp or something crazy like that....

NT4 you mean windows NT??

[pam123]

You could have a wonky AGP slot but without specs, or any info about what else you were doing 2 months ago, the only thing we can do is commiserate.
What radeon card ?
What mobo?
What HDD?
How did you go about the driver updates?
Help us help you.

[BackBreaka]

i have an agp radeon 64 ddr vivo
i have an epox 8k7a mobo
i had a fujitsu 20 gig hd (now its a quantum)


the only thing that has changed at that time was a sound card upgrade hercules gamesmuse dvd 5.1, but i have had it out of the system for a period of time and the problem still existed, even with reinstalls

i have just completed yet another fresh install of xp and i have only put in one driver which is the one for the sound card and the system locks up in device manager and scrolling some pages on the web. first thing i did before even installing the driver for the sound card was go to device manager to check there and it locked up on me....

pam you are the first person that has said what i think it might be but i dont want to drop the 150$ on a new mobo if its not the agp slot

i have used the drivers from the websites respectively.....

[pam123]

Your board has a specific AGP mini-port driver for 2000/XP.
Have you installed it?
It's here :http://www.epox.com/html/motherboard...4x3J3On22tr32n

You'll have to check your manual to see if you need the bus mastering drivers as well.
XP does not cover all the 4-in-1's a via board might need and I think you may have left out a step.

Install the driver before you install any other drivers.
One more thing, and this is a suggestion only, it is possible to wait out the "install XP driver " thing and leave your video to default to 640/480. You may want to try that as well.
Post back and let me know how it goes.

[BackBreaka]

i have previously installed the agp miniport driver, but at present i am just running with fresh install....

last night i started to play with the ram and the specific slots that they are located in and i have eliminated the freezing in device manager, but not in IE...

i cant seem to find in the manual about the bus mastering drivers...

im pretty sure the ram is good, is it possible that the ram slots are going??

[pam123]

I was checking about the bus mastering drivers and the feedback was mixed. They worked about 50% of the time. It's worth a try though.
Given how picky XP is about ram I think you'd have problems before you finished installing it. Also ram would give you problems whether you used an AGP card or a PCI card.
I find myself coming back to the "wonky AGP slot " though.
Have you e-mailed Epox support?
You could get the board replaced by them.

[BackBreaka]

i have emailed epox but there response was to make sure i had a 350 w power supply which i do...

havent heard back from them yet, with my second response....they are slow to reply


well it still locks up with only on stick of ram in it so im not sure again. checkin some other sites out it does sound like it could be a ram prob, but only the computer really knows and it doesnt want to tell me...

[pam123]

You could have ram problems but it's likely your mobo.
I finally had the wit to go over to Amdmb.com and it was enlightening. The 8K7A is becoming noted for problems.
Read this thread:http://www.amdforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=183247
RMA the board and let Epox solve it.

Cricket posted awhile back about the capacitors in PCMech.
By your description you fit within the time frame.

[BackBreaka]

pam,

is it possible that it could be the cpu at all??

someone mentioned it, so just asking

i do know now that it is not the video card or the ram

so it is down to the mobo and the cpu.....

i borrowed my bro-inlaws ram and video card and with a completely new install i could not get the system to even complete the install of xp, i had to install my ati vid card to get the install finished. when that was finished i tried his vid card again and it did nothing but freeze before i could do anything..

his card is a geforce 2 gts

[pam123]

A bad cpu would likely keep the comp from starting at all.
Unless your ps is a generic problem, and by your history it isn't,
I think you've eliminated all the other suspects.
Troubleshooting often comes down to straight empiricism and that leaves your board.
Is it still under warranty?

[BackBreaka]

no its not. i bought it back in may 2001 and epox said they wouldnt help me out unless my capacitors are bulging or leaking. so it looks like im just going to buy a new Gigabyte board.....

any word on them, looking at the 7vaxp?

thanks for your advice pam.

[glc]

Gigabyte isn't the greatest from a reliability and stability standpoint - I'd look at Asus with Nforce chipset myself.

[BackBreaka]

well that is a bit of a bummer because i already ordered the gigabyte board.....

all the review say it is pretty good, but if your an overclocker it isnt the best one to buy...... i dont overclock my machine so it should suffice for what i want to do....

[glc]

It performs well in reviews, true - but historically Gigabyte has had a somewhat spotty reliability record (and I've personally been burned by a few of their boards) - that's what I go by. The ECS K7S5A got great reviews, and there are a lot of people that are very happy with it, but there are also quite a few people who want to throw it out the window.

The odds are in your favor that you will not have any problems - even the majority of PC Chips boards are troublefree, I'm just going by trends here.

Asus is probably one of the highest regarded board makers out there - and I have had a couple bad ones. The only boards that are still batting 100% here are Intel but I *have* heard of bad ones.

[mike breck]

It sounds more like a driver problem to me. Surely if there was a problem with the AGP slot or the mobo, the Radeon wouldn't work perfectly (apart from no OpenGL) with the XP drivers.

Have you tried running Windows with the Standard VGA drivers (not pretty I know, but good for troubleshooting) to see if your problems persist. If it works with Standard VGA drivers, then this again would suggest incompatible video drivers.

What other AGP cards and drivers did you try?

[BackBreaka]

well i tried my bro inlaws geforce 2 gts and couldnt get the machine to do anything. locked up before i could even get into the desktop.....

even in safe mode the machine would lock up with that card in it....

at least with the card i have now i am able to check things in here as long as i dont use the scroll wheel or the up/down arrows to scroll

i did a completely fresh install with my bro... vid card installed and couldnt even get xp to finish setting up, but once i put mine in it setup

i put my ram and my vid card in his machine and it work no prob....

i hope its the mobo or i will be pissed on spending the money, but all the syptoms i have seem to be what others have on that thread that pam posted up above.... and that is my mobo they are talkin about

[BackBreaka]

o and the drivers i have installed at present are just xp drivers nothing special

[mike breck]

But XP will install with the AGP Radeon and work well with the XP Radeon drivers?

That's a strange one.

So just to clarify the situation, does the PC currently boot OK with the Radeon installed. You can navigate around CMOS setup without problems?

[BackBreaka]

yes i can navigate that is how i am able to post here, but i cannot use the scroll wheel or the dowun/up arrows, or look at almost anything in the device manager

i wouldnt say that it works well, it works minimal. i have no drivers installed at all, with the updated drivers is worse..... i cannot play any vid games without them freezing or rebooting, cant even get dungeon siege to start for example...

[mike breck]

You haven't tried overclocking or altered any of the AGP settings in the BIOS? I'm not asking you to do it - I'd just like to know if you have attempted either of these which has led to troublesome system changes.

What CPU and Ram do you have? Is the CPU and Ram set to the correct speed in the BIOS - 133fsb for Athlons/100 for Durons. 133 for PC2100. 100 for PC1600.

Try clearing the CMOS via the jumper on the mobo and see if that helps.

[BackBreaka]

no i never overclocked anything and have tried the jumper on the cmos and had the ram set right.....

i now have the new mobo installed and there seem to be no problems i can scroll using the wheel on the mouse and no lock ups in the device manager, so it looks as if the prob was the mobo.....

thanks all for the help!!!!!

[mike breck]

Well, it look like Pam was right about the AGP slot and/or mobo.

Strange one though. You would expect AGP problems to show up even before Windows begins to load. It's also funny why the problem didn't occur until you tried to update the video drivers.

Of course, the answer may be, that updating the drivers coincidentally occured at the same time as the AGP/mobo failure.

Who knows.

Glad you're up and running.

[jagr68]

im running 2 voodoo 2 3dfx cards and im trying to play SOldier of fortune two,it installs and everything,but then it sais "could not load openGL subsystem",i've downloaded the latest openGL drivers,"so i think",

Can anybody help me????

[BackBreaka]

i had that problem with jedi knight 2 outcast....
my problem ended up being the mobo so it seems, i replaced the mobo and have not had any freezing or anything. now i am not say that is what your problem is......

are you having any freezing anywhere???


did you dl from here????
http://www.voodoofiles.com/category.asp?x=2