Abit kt7 lock up problems, please help. I am loosing my f'n mind!

[jimmt]

Hello friends,
A friend of mine is having lockup problems with his system when running Directx games.
Here is his set up:
Abit KT-7 Riad w/900mhz Thunderbird cpu
ATI Rage 128 pro AGP video card w/vivo
Western Digital 40gb harddrive
Western Digital 15gb harddrive
Soundblaster 128 PCI
Diamond Supra 56k isa modem (hardware, not software)
Adaptec SCSI card
Iomega 2gb Jaz drive
Iomation super disk (ide floppy drive)
4x DVD drive
Iomega Zipcd cd burner
Samsung 128mb PC100 memory
Operating system is windows ME.

He is running all the updates from Microsoft.com for the OS. He is running the latest drivers for VIA, ATI, Iomega, Adaptec, Creative, and Iomation. 4x agp is disabld, AGP apature is set to 64, fast writes disabled, Video cache disabled, Video memory cache disabled, Bios set to non pnp (this fixed his modem problem in windows), and is running DirectX 7a.

When we attempt to play any directx games, the system will freeze. On the ati demo, it will lock up when the guy goes to walk out the tomb. I have racked my head against the wall trying to figure what the heck his problem was. All of this hardware worked fine in his old Gigabyte 7IX and 600mhz Athlon cpu. The operating system was reinstalled after the new motherboard upgrade, so this is a fresh install. Does anyone have a simular setup and had simular problems? If so, did you correct them? How did you corret it? Also, we tried win98 and the same problems existed. He really wants to run ME, since he dropped a couple bucks for the upgrade. I understand he wants to use what he purchased. He does not want to upgrade to win2k, so this isn't an optoin. Heck, if he listen to me, I would have him running Caldera. Anyway, thanks in adavance for the help.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[miniMUNCH]

press CTRL during boot. This will create a text log of your boot up. then do a "find" and read your boot up. Chances are, a driver component is not loading properly or at all. Device manager will not tell you if a directX driver used for 3d did not load properly, it will just say your card is functioning properly...in 2d.

Checkout Apus Hardware for more details on trouble-shooting your friends problem. I had some conflicts when I first did up my system too, but I'm through em now.

Cheers.

Oh ya: there's a Tech support forum here; post tech support questions there.

 

[Broadkipa]

I take the games run fine in open gl, you don't actualy say that they do but you say the problem is with DX. If games run ok in open gl but not DX then it has to be a driver problem,why not try DirectX8, you have nothing to lose. your best bet is to try a forum devoted to ATI cards such as this: http://www.rageunderground.com/
Try the forum for your rage pro I'm sure you will find an answer there.