Reboot frenzy

[pjr44114]

I started to have problems with my machine, which ran flawlessly for 18 months, about a month ago with first freezing, then it rebooting itself. The manufacturer took it for two weeks and did what tech support labs do these days, they wiped the hard drive.

The system ran OK for a few days with hardly anything on it but the OS, XP, Office Pro, updated nVidia drivers and one game. Then it started rebooting itself on reboot. Once I got it to the desktop successfully it would run without a problem, but it would take repeated bootups to get to the desktop if I had to restart the machine.

So, I decided to try a new video card to see if this was the source of the problem. The original card was the GeForce listed below. I just got the 9600 Pro today. After a couple of false starts trying to remove the nVidia drivers, I cleaned them out got the machine to boot with the Standard Display Adapter and tried to install the ATI drivers from the disk included with the retail package. I kept getting an INF error when I selected Express setup in the ATISetup program, so I tried the Custom setup and unclicked Install DirectX since I was already running DX 9.0a. The drivers appeared to install this time but on restart the machine still would not boot to desktop, it freezes at the XP screen and reboots itself. It will boot to Safe Mode.

So, I removed the drivers again, got the latest Catylyst drivers from the ATI site and installed those. They seemed to install fine, but the same thing happened on reboot. It freezes at the XP screen with a couple of small white artifacts at the top of the screen and then reboots itself repeatedly until I select Safe Mode.

Does anyone have an ideal what's going on?

1.9 GHz P4
256 MB (RDRam)
DVD Drive
CD-RW
60 GB HD
SB 5.1
GeForce 3 Ti 500 (latest nVidia drivers)/Sapphire 9600 Pro Ultimate (latest ATI drivers)
Windows XP

 

[pjr44114]

A more complete listing of my system:

INTEL DBG850 MOTHERBOARD


1 | 1.44MB FLOPPY DRIVE BLACK


1 | 340 WATT POWER SUPPLY


1 | INTEL PENTIUM 4 1900 MHZ


2 | 128MB RDRAM PC800


1 | SEAGATE BARRACUDA 60GB:


1 | NEC MULTISYNC 19" FE950+BK


1 | VISIONTEK NVIDIA GEFORCE3 TI 500


1 | SOUNDBLASTER LIVE 5.1


1 | PIONEER 16X DVD PLAYER


1 | PLEXTOR 16X/10X/40X CD-RW


1 | US ROBOTICS 56K FAX MODEM - PCI


1 | INTEL PRO/100 S DESKTOP ADAPTER

 

[rudeguy]

ATI support sucks pretty bad huh?

This is what I had to do to get my card working right:

uninstall all ATI drivers
run regvac and remove all ATI entries from my registry
install slightly older, more stable drivers found at rage3d.com

 

[jim1976]

It could a conflict from the nvidia drivers still in the registry.
R u sure they are completely removed? If u don't know try download Detonator rip or detonator destroyer.They are supposed to clear the remainings of the uninstallation of nvidia drivers i think.
Hope this helps.good luck