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9700 Pro Refurb Problems - Driver or Card?

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Unicron80

Member
Just bought and installed a refurb 9700 pro from Newegg a few days ago. Couldn't be happier with it until today.

When I booted up, static vertical blue lines appeared on the screen, starting with the initial mem check and all the way through into windows xp pro. Never seen this before, and thought "OH crap, I got a bad card."

But I didn't panic, and rolled back my drivers from catalyst 5.1 to 4.12. Now the blue lines are gone.

Freak occurance? Bad driver? Wrong installation? Or...*gasp* bad card?

I need to figure this one out in the next few days or else I won't be able to RMA the card to newegg.

FYI, I ran driver cleaner and followed the instructions to a T. Don't have anything overclocked, and am running a 2000+xp with 512mb ram with an abit nf7s v2, running XP Pro.

Would appreciate any help or advice, thanks in advance.
 
You may want to try using using the DVI to VGA adapter and connect that way to the monitor. You will not have any difference in quality but it may put an end to your problem. I remember funny things happening on my 9700Pro when using the vga port. When I switched it over to the adapted side, I never had a single problem after that. Go figure huh? 🙂

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You sure it couldn't just be a loose VGA cable connection? Or possibly a bad wire in the cabling? Next time it does it (if it does) try wiggling the cable around with the computer on and see if the lines appear/disappear.
 
I highly doubt it would be the drivers as when you initially boot your machine, the only thing it's running on is the video card BIOS, motherboard BIOS and CMOS settings. There are no video drivers loaded yet.

So if you have visual problems at the initial POST (Power On Self-Test) then it's a hardware issue or BIOS problem. If visual problems occur after booting into windows, it can be either hardware or software.
 
Originally posted by: Unicron80
So you guys think it's a connection problem? Hadn't thought about that.
Click to expand...

Well, the drivers only run once the card gets into Windows, so changing them wouldn't affect anything at the BIOS screen. It's gotta be a hardware issue -- and loose/faulty connections are much more common than most other potential hardware issues.
 
*slaps forehead*

That makes complete sense. Must have been a coincidence that they left after uninstalling the driver. So, bottom line...RMA or no? Just buy a dvi to vga converter is your recommendation? Didn't come with one, refurb from Newegg.

Thanks again guys.
 
My recommendation is to tighten your video cable connection and wait to see if it happens again. And if it does, whether or not jiggling the cable affects the video.

I'm betting that if you double-check to make sure your monitor cable is tight you'll never see those vertical lines again.
 
RMA the card while you still can, especially if it is a Sapphire card. I waited to RMA my Newegg refurb 9700 Pro (same problem - corruption right from the POST screen) and ended up having to RMA it through Sapphire. I sent it in 3 weeks ago and I am still waiting...

 
As I mentioned earlier, I had various display problems on the VGA side of a 9700Pro card I used to own. Once I switched over to the other side using the adapter, it worked perfectly. I realize this is not the best solution for people, but I have never had a desire to use more than one monitor, so it was a non-issue for me....

m 🙂
 
I owned one that had the same sort of problem, would occur mostly on a cold boot. If I re-started the comp it was fine, untill one day it did'nt cure it. I looked at the card closely with a 7x eye-loop and found evidence of a bad solder joint that looked like it had been repaired. I then looked at 3 other identical components and found one the factory did'nt solder all the way.

See if you can get it to happen on a cold boot. Shut the comp off and wait a minute before trying to start it up again. RMA is probably the best thing, and the reason someone probably returned it in the first place.
 
I did try the DVI and VGA outputs of my 9700 Pro, and both showed the screen corruption during POST.

Bad Memory = RMA
 
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