System freezes with Chaintech Geforce Ti 4200

[bengood22]

Hello everyone,
I just built a new system recently and yesterday I got my new video card and installed it. I had to reinstall windows after my partition table got all ****ed up but now I have Windows XP running just fine. However I have yet to been able to get any 3D working with the card. I can't even install Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2, the system freezes. I tried to run dxdiag and it also freezes. The next time I try to run, it warns that there was a problem accessing DirectDraw and asks to skip it. When I do I can get into the dxdiag tool, but still I cannot test anything as DirectDraw would freeze the system and Direct3D was not enabled with a message that the nv4somethingorother.sys (can't remember right now, I'm at work) was not signed. Does anyone know why my system would altogether freeze when trying anything 3D?

Athlon XP 2100+ (running at 1800MHz)
256MB DDR PC2700 RAM
MSI KT4 Ultra Motherboard
Chaintech Geforce 4 Ti 4200 64MB
Windows XP (not yet updated to SP1 but the latest critical updates applied)
350W Power supply
Also tried to update DirectX to 8.2 (basically just an updated DirectPlay I've been told)
NVidia drivers 40.72 (also locks up with the 28.32 that came with the card)
Latest MB BIOS update
AGP is set to 4x and 64MB aperture in BIOS

Please advise.

 

[nemesismk2]

Sounds like an agp driver problem to me, are you using the latest version for your motherboard?

 

[bengood22]

I was just about to edit to say I had installed the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers, but you could be right. I'll check into that some more when I get home.

 

[bengood22]

OK I'm home now and I've doublechecked everything. Installed the latest VIA 4in1 drivers, checked my BIOS for anything I could think of. Installed a WHQL certified NVidia driver package. Still nothing works. The only way I can get directdraw to work in dxdiag is to turn off the directdraw acceleration by the slider under the advanced display properties. Obviously this means no hardware at all which means no games. Anyone else have any ideas what the **** is wrong with this thing?

 

[bengood22]

I remembered some files from the windows xp cd failed to copy during install, but they didn't seem to have anything to do with directx or anything important, but just in case I put windows 2000 on, and the same thing is happening. I would think the card was bad if only it wasn't working perfectly in 2D.

 

[bengood22]

I've just got done taking the card into the other computer (Pentium 3 1GHz, Tyan trinity 400 motherboard) and it works perfectly. Something with my system just doesn't like this card. That Pentium 3 has a 250W power supply and this system has a 350W one. That's the only thing left I can even think to blame it on but with 100W more I'd think that wasn't it either.