GeForce3 acting strangely...

[nullpointerus]

I got a GF3 from a friend and it has developed the strangest problem. When I turn on my computer, the monitor never wakes from its power saving mode and if I turn the monitor on manually there is no signal from the card, so the monitor just shuts itself off again. I bought the card a few months ago, and it was working fine at the time.

I finally got the card working - well, sort of - by the following process. I removed the GF3, swapped in an old PCI video card, powered on, went into the BIOS and changed the primary video card setting (I forget what it's called exactly) to PCI instead of AGP. Then I left the old PCI video card in and installed the GF3 in the AGP slot just beside it.

Here's the strange part. I booted up and let Windows XP detect the old PCI card, then I was able to go to Display properties and enable the option to extend my desktop on the GF3! Both cards appeared to be working fine, so in Windows XP I set the GF3 to be the primary card and disabled the old PCI video card. The card works fine now and plays 3D games for hours without a single problem.

However, if I set the GF3 as the primary display adapter in the BIOS setup, the card fails to produce a signal again. I have to have the PCI card set as the primary display adapter in the BIOS and the GF3 set as the primary display adapter in Windows in order to have the GF3 produce a signal as the primary card.

Have you ever heard of a problem like this before, and if so what might I do to fix it? I contacted Visiontek, and I was pleasantly surprised when they responded to me after a few weeks. Yes, I did say weeks. I only had to send them the same email every day for...how many days? I lost count. Anyway, they just sent me a canned reply about upgrading to DirectX 8 and to make sure that the AGP slot was compatible.

I have a FIC AD11 with an Athlon XP 1600+, so I have no idea why the board wouldn't be compatible. I also have no idea why having DirectX 9.0 installed on my Windows XP machine would cause the video card to fail to produce a signal even at the BIOS POST screen. Oh, and yes, I did make sure that the computer is not just locked up; the startup beep occurs and then the hard drive churns like usual as XP starts up.

So...any ideas?

 

[Smilin]

Had this problem myself. I could power cycle and cold boot several times and finally get it to work. For me it turned out to be a power issue. Most modern vid cards are really reaching the edge of the AGP power consuption spec. If you're on the border with your power supply this could be it.

The best luck I had before swapping PSU's was to boot the thing just long enough to let drives and everything spin up and then quickly reset again and let post finish.

 

[nullpointerus]

That's what I thought at first, but then I wondered why it would work fine after adding another card and setting the GF3 to the secondary display in the BIOS. Perhaps it just has to "warm up" or something, though.

Since I am going to reinstall XP soon, do you think that removing all the other non-essential equipment from the computer would free enough voltage for the GF3 to operate as the primary display, or wouldn't that affect the power to the AGP slot at all?

I may wind up just getting a new case anyway. This one seems to have very poor airflow and the exhaust is constantly fairly warm. I have no idea what the temperature of the CPU is, but it is stable. I have the BIOS set to power off if the temperature reaches 55 degrees Celsius.

Oh, one more thing that I just remembered is that the PS/2 mouse port doesn't work on a cold boot. Is it likely that, too, would be caused by an overworked or failing power supply, or would that make you think it was a bad motherboard? I think it's still under warranty.