Video drivers (Radeon 9700) crashing, help?

[Supermercado]

I built my new system this summer and everything seemed to be working until recently. The full specs are in my sig, but it's a P4 2.4c, Abit IC7, PowerColor Radeon 9700np, with 512MB PC3200 Corsair XMS memory. Video drivers are Catalyst 3.8.
I never experienced these crashes (I assume it's the video drivers, anyway) right after I built the system, but shortly after I got back to school where I leave my computer on 24/7, I began to experience failures. Every so often, I'll just be cruising along perfectly fine and then suddenly, the screen flickers to black and then comes back up in like 16 colors and 640x480 resolution. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how often or when it happens. It's gone just fine for several days, 2 1/2 weeks, or just a couple of hours (it did it twice tonight, but hadn't done it in the past several days), then it crashes.

I've looked in the Event Viewer (it's XP Pro) after each crash and not found much of anything useful there, except for once. One time, I found an error caused by ati2mtag. After a little searching, I think the problem is ati2dvag.dll but after some more looking, I've still not been able to dig up anything useful as far as a fix goes.

The system seems to be completely stable and works just fine (outside of eating up huge amounts of RAM for no apparent reason...) save for these driver issues. I've tried several versions of the Catalyst drivers but nothing seems to help. I've tried disabling FastWrites, no dice. Anyone have any suggestions or a fix at all? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mem]

Hmmm could be hardware or software problem,you tried the card in another PC?

I would download Driver Cleaner 2 and follow the instructions and reinstall either CATs 3.7 or 3.8(some people are getting problems with 3.8s).Some Bios tweaks might help so disable all video shadowing,disable video ram cacheable,disable system bios cacheable,you could try upping the AGP voltage in BIOS a little and see if that helps stability.





Driver Cleaner 2 link .

 

[bandana163]

Try the older Catalyst 3.7 or its Omega equivalent.
Catalyst 3.8 will rape you and steal your lunch money if you are not careful.

BTW, your card is not accidentally overclocked, is it?

 

[Supermercado]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll definitely give Driver Cleaner a shot and I'll try the 3.7s or the Omega 3.7s. All those things you mentioned, Mem, are just in the standard BIOS?

As far as I know, the card isn't overclocked. I had some Rage3d tweakers on there, but I never really changed anything on it and none of the settings were for the clock and memory speeds.

None of these video problems should be related to my runaway RAM, should they? I keep seeing explorer using upwards of 40MB of RAM, IE using 35+, etc. I know IE is resource-intensive, but I don't ever remember seeing explorer using 40MB of RAM all the time. Maybe it's time to just nuke the machine and start over...

 

[Mem]

All those things you mentioned, Mem, are just in the standard BIOS?

Yep should be,have a good look through your BIOS,some are under "advanced chipset" section.

 

[Supermercado]

Originally posted by: Mem

All those things you mentioned, Mem, are just in the standard BIOS?

Yep should be,have a good look through your BIOS,some are under "advanced chipset" section.

Great. Thanks a lot. I'll definitely look into that this afternoon.

 

[Supermercado]

No dice... I uninstalled the 3.8 Catalysts, the control panel for them, ran Driver Cleaner, got rid of everything it found, and went back to the 3.7s. Still doing it... It's done it twice in the last hour :|

 

[Mem]

What`s your PSU? Did you try bumping the AGP voltage a little and try slower ram timings in BIOS,also double check fastwrites is disabled both in BIOS and ATI Control Panel "Smartgart tab".

 

[Supermercado]

My PSU is a generic 400w unit (it came with my case and I figured I'd see how it was. I didn't have any more money to get a better one when I bought the machine, otherwise I'd have gotten an Antec or something). I don't know if that's the problem or not. I did slow RAM timings in the BIOS, haven't touched the AGP voltage, though. I'll try disabling FastWrites again. That was something I tried before I posted this thread. Worth a shot again, though, I guess. Anything to get rid of these crashes.