Rebooting 9500pro....

[pam123]

Last night, while listening to a music clip on amazon.com, my monitor suddenly went weird, rolling lines and shimmering textures, and then the computer began rebooting itself continually.
I finally managed to shut it off and, when I restarted, the same shimmering texture was there only this time it looked very familiar.
Checking Display Properties proved it, I was back, without warning and for no reason, to a 60Hz refresh rate.
I checked event viewer and found the errors, ATI's drivers and APCI.
I set everything back up again and , once again, used the rage3d tweak to fix the refresh rate.
For now everything is fine but I think it's pretty clear that the problems ATI has been having with the refresh rate in XP and the error that cause continuous reboots are related.
Anyone else with any info to add on this?

[sleepypost]

yes pam. last night my pc froze then rebooted. i left for school two days ago and i came home to my horror to find the PC rebooting. The second time i received a blue screen of death!

i have a 9500 PRO by the way. i noticed that everything was fine when i used the radeonator 2.0 "lock" refresh rate thingy. i hadn't used it after my first reinstall a long time ago so maybe that was the problem. i hope so cause i hate random reboots!

[pam123]

I'm considering making a list and sending the whole thing to ATI's Catalyst makers, if it's long enough.
They seem to be ignoring the refresh rate problem and getting enough e-mail about the fact that it's linked to the reboot problem might change their minds.

[sleepypost]

does the "locker" work for you? it seems to work for me now.

[pam123]

I thought it was, but the other night proved me wrong.
I had no trouble for the last month so maybe my comp doesn't like amazon music clips? I admit that doesn't sound likely.

[sleepypost]

Lol, no but i know what its like trying to find culprits. well, im starting to suspect that it wasn't my card after all. I think it was a virsus (how'd that get in there???) because it had corrupted my boot files and more.

What kind of Radeon 9500 Pro is it? Mine is ATi. Also, what drivers are you using? Im using Catalyst 2.4. (yea they're old but they work well.)

BTW, what screen res and refresh rate can your monitor handle with ease? And what is the rage3d tweak?

[pam123]

I'm using the 3.2 drivers and they've been fine, so far, as has DX9.0a. The card is "built by ATI".
The best thing about the 3.2s is that I can use AA on older 16bit games and I found Thief: The Dark Project in a bargain bin just a few weeks ago. With 4X AA it does not look dated.
I have a 17" monitor and it's optimum is 85Hz at 1024 x 768, which is what I usually keep it at. I can take it up to 1280 x 1024 but only if I'm willing to drop the refresh rate, which I'm not.

Rage3d tweak is the overclocking and refresh rate locking utility that's especially written for Radeon cards. It's updated with each new driver release and is a free download at www.rage3d.com , that site is all about ATI cards past present and future.
Hal reminded me about it after I had some trouble with refresh rate fix.
If you haven't checked it out it's definitly worth a look.

[sleepypost]

Thanks for the info. sounds like we're in the same boat. I use Radeonator 2.0 Locker though as i OC my card considerably...