8500LE Problem with any Catalyst driver set

[Sleestak]

Ok here's the deal. I bought a Crucial 8500LE 128MB from a guy I work with, he upgraded to a 9700, for $30 and put it in my secondary PC last night which I then reformatted and built with a fresh copy of XP Pro SP1. Problem is that when I try to install the Catalyst 2.4 drivers the machine does 1 of 2 things. It either goes to a black screen after the Win XP spash screen and never recovers or it goes to the blue desktop color with a white dot in the upper left corner and sticks there. I just had the machine at the default VGA driver when I tried loading the Catalyst Drivers. I made sure to use the "Powered By" driver set off of ATI's site but no luck. I tried both version 2.3 & 2.4 of the drivers with the same result. I have to boot into Safe Mode in order to revert back to the VGA driver so that I can get into the system and try again. I even tried the "Built By" driver set with the same result. I finally managed to grab the 7.73 reference drivers and install them just fine. Can anyone help me out here? I know the guy I bought it from never had this problem because we game together from time to time and this was in his gaming box. My system specs are:

Gigabyte 6OXT MB with latest BIOS
Celeron 1.3Ghz
384 RAM (3 128MB sticks)
Creative Labs PCI 128 Sound Card
U.S. Robotics 56k Internal Fax Modem(Not a Win Modem and only in the system so I can test dial up issues where I work)
3Com 3C905 Network Card
Seagate Baracuda IV 40GB Hard Drive
Lite On 48x24x48 CDRW
Digital 56x CD ROM
Windows XP Pro SP1
300w Powerman Power Supply

I have noticed a time or two when the system tried to come up that it went to the logon screen and then crashed with an infinite loop error. I've searched the forums at Rage3D and read about all the hell with this infiinte loop issue. Man....this sucks...Damn XP

Any help?

 

[DieHardware]

It works fine with the 7.73 reference drivers ?

 

[Sleestak]

Yes, the 7.73 drivers work fine. I'm actually using the ones I found off Sapphire's web site but they are reference drivers. I used the ATI info utility to see who actually built the card since I was pretty sure Crucial didn't actually build them and the utility says it's a Sapphire card.

 

[DieHardware]

Have you tried Crucial's free tech support? If that doesn't help and your buddy still has the receipt, you could always take advantage of Crucial's money back compatability guarantee

 

[BFG10K]

Do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system?
Also try using safe defaults in your BIOS in addtion to disabling AGP fastwrites.

 

[Sleestak]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
Do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system?
Also try using safe defaults in your BIOS in addtion to disabling AGP fastwrites.

Yes, I have done all of that.

 

[cmbates1]

I had the exact same problem with an OEM powered by ati 8500le 128mb. I got mine from newegg. Mine failed with both the catalyst 2.4 and the drivers that came with the cd. All my symptoms were exactly the same, i.e the never ending black screen after the windows loading screen. But mine also completely killed my c drive. I mean it was completely blank. It was like it hadn't been formatted or anything. I'm currently in the process of trying to send mine back to newegg. Does anyone know if there are similar problems with any other ati card? I really want to avoid this disaster again.

 

[DieHardware]

But mine also completely killed my c drive. I mean it was completely blank. It was like it hadn't been formatted or anything

Killed you're C partition eh? Uhm...yeah...right.

 

[Sleestak]

I managed to correct my problem last night. What I did was remove the 3Com NIC and the system booted just fine. I really need a NIC in the PC so I grabbed a cheapo NetGear NIC at Best Buy for $15 and brought it home and installed it. System still works fine and I have the Catalyst 2.4 drivers installed.

Very strange.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[Killrose]

From my experience i'll never buy anything made by 3com for a computer. Their external modems are ok, but only because they are not inside the computer.

Also 3com nics are supposedly the worst for an overclocked bus.

 

[Operandi]

From my experience i'll never buy anything made by 3com for a computer. Their external modems are ok, but only because they are not inside the computer.

Heh, yeah I've had similar experiences with 3Com, for some reason they just don't seem like to like certain system configurations.