ATI device failure help

[azntiger0586]

while playing game or surfing the net or sometime doing nothing. my computer would freeze for 20 seconds, 32 bit colors become 8 bit i think (red, blue, and grey color with 640x480 resolution) and says Windows has recovered from a device failure. anyone know what is going on?

 

[azntiger0586]

here is the exact message "Windows detected and recovered from a device failure." i think something is wrong with the card, i had nvidia card before and never had this problem, so im thinking it has to be the card. the card itself is working fine, fan is working properly and no smell of burning. ? I think there is a conflict between my card and windows xp in some sort of infinite loop but i am not sure. Sometime the computer would just freeze for 10 seconds, monitor flickers, pops up that message, and resolution becomes 640x480 with 8bit colors. can anyone help please?

the specs:

-radeon 9800 pro sapphire
-p4 1.8ghz
-768 ddr ram
-P4X400 Chipsets (Dragon ultra plat.)
-running 3.7 catalyst (ran 3.6 drivers before, same problem.)

 

[vawillie]

Having just been there with your problem, ATI Tech Support will have you go to their site -- ati/support/3986.html -- You'll learn that the Windows XP message is not exactly indicative of the problem. Your driver compatitibility, however, might be. I could not get any stability with my 9600 Pro, and ATI Tech Support concluded it was a flawed card. ... However, I still suspect there was a driver problem connected to the MSI/AMD compatibility with ATI cards. ... Unfortunately, I'm not technically savvy enough to precisely know whether I had the absolutely drop-dead correct driver for the MSI motherboard.