help me!!! (first computer build)

[Cardinal5fanatic]

alright, I have built my first pc. Here are the specs....

Asus A8V Deluxe
Athlon fx-53
1GB corsair ddr
Antec 550 watt true control
WD raptor 74GB
plextor 12x DVD burner
plextor 52x32x52 CD burner
creative labs sb audigy 2 zs
eVGA Geforce 6800 gt
Windows XP pro sp1

After I installed Windows the first thing i did was install the motherboard's drivers.....after that i installed my graphic card's driver......well the next time i booted up my computer was screwed up....my desktop had 2 or 3 weird lines going vertical down my screen and the computer was obviously unstable and after about 3 minutes of my LCD flickering and constant lockups it went to a blue screen and shutdown.....so i spent forever trying to fight through the system and the first thing i disabled was the graphics card to see if it was faulty.....well everything worked fine after i disabled it.....so I got an RMA from eVGA and my new card does the exact same thing after the drivers were installed. I have tried many different drivers....deleting the installed one before i try another one.
Please help....getting really frustrated......
i just installed the newest asus BIOS and the newest VIA 4 in 1 driver and nothing..........

 

[titanmiller]

Sounds like you might need to install the monitor driver, I have never worked with an LCD, but from experience I have learned that the monitor driver can help solve problems with a CRT.

Bump....I know how you feel, problems on your first build are so discouraging, but dont worry you'll get it fixed

 

[Cardinal5fanatic]

sorry to mention this....but i have installed the monitor driver......and have tried using a crt to see if it was my lcd.....same thing on the crt......but one thing i have been thinking about was that even though i installed the drivers in the right order i didnt reboot until every driver on my pc was installed.....would that cause a situation like this??

 

[Cardinal5fanatic]

it wouldnt be a motherboard malfunction would it???

 

[413xram]

I noticed that you said nothing about dirx installment. did you install dx9? Also in bios make sure your agp voltage is set to 1.5 volts. You could also disable agp fast writes. Are you sharing the molex connector with another device? That should not matter but it might. Just some ideas...I hope you find problem. You could also check PSU voltages....just in case PSU is faulty. And yes unfortunately it could be a faulty MB.

 

[Cardinal5fanatic]

yes i did install directx 9 and i think my problem is that i installed all of my drivers before i rebooted when i should have rebooted after each major driver installation.....i am going to format the hard drive and give microsoft a call.....

 

[413xram]

Did you find problem?

 

[VIAN]

Someone is might rich. I can't believe you cheaped out on the video card. ...and that you didn't get an Nforce3.

Did you update windows?

Install Windows.
Install Motherboard drivers.
Completely update windows.
Install Graphics drivers.

If you did this, then, why don't you try another different graphics card. This will conclude that the motherboard has a problem. If this is the case, send it back and get and Nforce3 board. Via sucks and they have always sucked and they will continue to suck.

Yeah, also make sure that the graphics card has a dedicated PS wire. Check voltages and such. Make sure bios settings are ok.

 

[Cardinal5fanatic]

so not updating windows first could cause this driver issue?

 

[Cardinal5fanatic]

oh and i cheaped out on the video card because i didnt want to use two molex connectors and two slots on the back of my pc.....and i should be able to overclock my gt to ultra speeds according to many people....for 400 instead of 500.......

 

[fbrdphreak]

I wouldn't call getting a 6800GT cheaping, but that's just me. Oh, and VIA does suck. nForce3 boards are sweet from what i hear.

Anyway, if there's all kinds of weird lines and its flickering, it sounds like the refresh rate might be set wrong or something. Also, what drivers are you loading? Are you loading the drivers that come with the card or the latest ones from nVidia's website? I would follow VIAN's suggestions. Load Windows, load LATEST VIA 4in1 drivers, then update Windows. From there, download the latest video drivers from nVidia.
BEFORE you install them, set a System Restore point and make sure you know how to use Safe Mode. Then go ahead and install them & reboot. (mind you reboot after every driver install) If something is still wrong, I would say you've got some hardware issues. Do you have a spare video card somewhere thaty ou can use? Pop that one in and see if Windows works with that. Get back to us

 

[Insomniak]

So far, the 61.36 WHQL has given me the best IQ and performance, but I'm on a GF4 TI...