Infamous Gainward ti4200

[HyTeK]

Well, alot of you know of the gainward 4200. I have one, but never had a problem till recently.

Here is a quote from my problem I posted over on athlonmb

I to have a gainward ti4200. When I first bought it I modded it. Put ramsinks all over it and one big hsf (a p4 cooler) on the chip itself. I have the defective caps on the board, (1500uf, 1000uf, and 1500uf) along the top row. Anyways for the past 2 years or so the card has been solid, even being heavily o/c'd. Only the past 5 months it has been giving me random checkboards. Only 2 weeks ago the computer would turn off at random. As of this weekend I can reinstall XP, but I cannot load any drivers. XP runs awesome with no vid drivers installed, but as soon as I load any drivers, the computer won't boot up, and I have to actually take the card out of the computer, reinstall it, and boot xp into safe mode for it to do anything.

So today, being a solder tech in the military I have access to solder stations, microscopes, and a large stock of caps. I replaced the 1500uf caps for 560uf 6v caps, and replaced the 1000uf cap for different 1000uf 6.3v cap. Even though the caps are a bit larger then normal, the solder job is better then the factories solder joints lol.

Anyways, the good thing is, I can reboot the computer and have no more problems with the card. I don't have to take the card out anymore for the computer to boot. But why on earth can I not load the drivers? I have tried the trusty 44.03 and 45.23 drivers, and every version since then. Even the MS update drivers. Nothing seems to work. They install, computer reboots, xp starts to load, and bam, screen turns off, and computer locks up. Have to turn off the computer and back on and go into safe mode.

I have a DFI NFIIA board, XP1800, 2 256megs of crucial ram, Maxtor D740X drive, and the ti4200. I have tried many different nforce drivers also and different ram. Only thing I haven't tried is new cpu and mobo. I havn't tried putting the ti4600 I have in the system to see if it does it or not, don't want to take a chance and screwing up another card.

Anyone have any clues at all to why I can't load the drivers, but XP runs great without them? (cept I can't play any d3d or ogl games)

Here is the link to the hugh thread on the gainward 4200

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?p=2972882#post2972882