Nvidia or VIA or Microsoft or ?? to blame?

[Workin']

Here's the setup (nothing overclocked):

Shuttle AK31A KT266A
4x256MB Crucial DDR
Gainward GF3 Ti200 or Leadtek GF2 Pro or Visiontek GF2 GTS-V
1.4 GHz Tbird
Vortex2 sound card
Adaptec 2930 SCSI card
Linksys NIC
60GB Maxtor HD
Toshiba DVD
External Yamaha SCSI CDRW
Internal SCSI Zip drive

This stuff all works perfectly under Windows 2000. Stable as a rock.

However, no matter what I try I can't get any D3D apps to work under Windows XP Pro. They crash the machine instantly.

I've seen other posts with similar problems, it seems there has been no solution?? It seems ridiculous that the arguably most popular video card won"t work, anyone have any ideas??

 

[Scootin159]

Have you tried a bare-minimum setup (cpu, mobo, 1 256 stick, video & hdd)? Do that & slowly add devices (one by one), until it dies, that should narrow it down. Also try different BIOS revisions.

 

[Workin']

Tried that (except different BIOSes, there aren't any for my board). Even with a bare config it still won't work.

It all works dandy under Win2k, so the problem has to be with XP or a driver for something. Very disappointing, what would someone who knows very little about computers do? Throw their hands in the air and return everything?? This is worse than trying to get my ATI Rage Fury Pro VIVO to work back in the day....

I know others have had this problem, but all the threads just die out, you never know if the problem was solved or they just gave up.

Has somebody had this problem and got it solved?

 

[Scootin159]

I have a GeForce 2 GTS running off a KT133a with no problems, which makes me think that the problem is either in the KT266a or in the shuttle board specifically (my guess is there will be a BIOS fix for this).

 

[Rahminator]

Do OpenGL games work fine or is this the same as D3D? Remove 1 or 2 ram sticks (I've heard of problem with all 4 banks populated) and remove the sound card. If that still doesn't work, try running your D3D games with only the bare minumum, ie. gfs card, 1 stick of memory, hard drive and load fail-safe defaults in bios (but disable onboard audio!). Disconnect everything else and if it works plug all the other devices in one by one.

 

[Pabster]

Likely a RAM issue. You're populating all 4 DIMM banks, and I'm assuming they're just regular unbuffered PC2100 modules. This board isn't stable in such a configuration. You could try removing one DIMM ...

 

[Workin']

Thanks for the replies - I already tried taking the $%&#* thing apart and putting it together a piece at a time - same results, except my level of irritation has risen to unheard of levels! Plus there's no way I'm leaving parts out or buying new parts as a fix, since everything works perfectly with Win2k.

The thing is, it's stable as a rock under Windows 2000, with all RAM banks populated, and everything else in there too. I can let any testing program run all night with no errors, or play any game for hours on end, under Win2k.

The problem only happens with WinXP. I guess either XP uses some resource in a different way than 2000 that reveals a flaw in a hardware component, or one of the drivers doesn't like XP (although I could not determine which one), or XP has some flaw.

For now I don't really need anythng XP has to offer, but I didn't really need to flush that money down the toilet, either.

What I was hoping is that someone else has had this problem (I know people have, there are several other threads along this line), and have a "magic" combination of driver versions and/or settings that will make it work with XP.

 

[mboy]

Def the drivers.
BTW, someone who doesnt know anything about computers wouldnt be running anything close to this setup.

 

[Workin']

Yes, I installed the 410 AGP driver from VIA. Didn't fix the problem. I also tried the 4.34 and 4.35 4in1's. And Nvidia drivers from 12.4 to 23.10. Makes no difference.

Someone in another thread said to try reinstalling DirectX 8.1. Maybe I'll do that. It'll have to wait until tomorrow, though.