XFX Ti4200 + Win XP = crashing *fixed*

[trilks]

I installed my XFX GeForce 4 Ti4200 onto my mobo, but my system freezes a lot because of it. Seems to hang on menus and tooltips a lot. I took it out and am running the onboard VGA with no troubles. Have installed the newest drivers (v30.82, i believe it was), have reinstalled Win XP, have done everything I can think of, but system still freezes with the AGP card.

my specs:
AOpen AX4G Pro (Intel 845G chipset)
Corsair XMS 512mb pc3200 ram
XFX GeForce Ti4200 128mb
Win XP

Anyone with a XFX card having the same troubles? All suggestions welcome...

 

[AnAndAustin]

Well there are a number of factors you need to check.

Whenever trouble-shooting be sure to set any o/c's back to their defaults including your OC RAM (use PC2700 speeds). Other hw things to check are; 1. Try another AGP gfx card, is your slot faulty? 2. Is your PSU up to the job (300W min)? 3. Can you try the 4200 in another PC to see if it could be a faulty card? 4. Heat, is your case/PC simply running too hot (4200 will kick out a lot more heat than an onboard solution)?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Software: Drivers, did you completely remove all traces of the old gfx drivers? After installing the latest official nVidia gfx card drivers did you also reinstall DX8.1? Did you try the gfx card manu's website (XFX?) for drivers or compatability info? Do you have the latest drivers for all of your hw (esp mobo and inc BIOS)?

Other things to check are the BIOS settings themselves, best to disable things like sideband addressing, fast writes and AGP4x (use 2x?). Also set AGP Aperture to 64MB and ensure you have an IRQ assigned to the AGP slot. Obviously enable the AGP as the primary display device and it's best to disable your onboard gfx too. Disabling 'PnP OS Installed' may help (WinXP likes to do things itself apparently) and it is always a good idea to disable AGP caches and shadows in the BIOS as these do very little other than cause instability ... we no longer need a 1% perf boost in DOS LOL!

 

[onza]

my opinion..

install win2k..

onza

 

[AnAndAustin]

I understand your reasoning, but WinXP is effectively the newer and enhanced version of Win2000. In fact Win2000 was intended to be what WinXP is, a joining of 9x and NT which ended up as WinME and Wion2000. Admittedly WinXP has a few bells and whistles which you may not want nor welcome, but although I can understand why Win2000 users are miffed WinXP Pro is certainly an enhancement over Win2000. That's just MHO anyway.

 

[BFG10K]

Did you disable your onboard video and correctly remove all traces of it?
Do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your system?
Any overclocks?
How are your system temperatures and how is your power supply?

 

[trilks]

I'm pretty sure now that its the onboard VGA drivers that are still installed for some reason. I've tried to uninstall them via 'add/remove programs', but they wont uninstall. Shall I just do a clean boot of windows, or is there some way to get rid of them that I dont know about?


And thanks for your help, guys. Much appreciated.

 

[AnAndAustin]

If Add/Remove won't work then you could look for any directory relating to the onboard gfx as it may have an install file located there. Otherwise you may be able to at least manually remove the appropriate inf file (\Windows\INF) along with the vxd's, dll's etc it used (check this by reusing it and looking in the device manage and dxdiag). Then try reinstalling the gfx card drivers, the latest ones from the manu's website or else the CD are probably the safest ones to use at least until the system's stable and rem to install DX8.1 too (Win2000/XP version).

 

[AnAndAustin]

If you still get problems you can either install Windows to your existing directory (should save having to reinstall all progs, games etc) or else do a fresh install of Windows which should be the best guide. I would try to rule out hw faults before reinstalling Windows, see my above posts. It's a good idea to reseat all of your cards and RAM sticks, a bad contact can cause this type of problem, progs like PCcheck and RAMtest can test your RAM. I'd certainly set your RAM down to PC2700 (DDR333) speed as anything rated higher than this can often be overly optimistic. If you can, try some of your components in another PC and verify they work correctly. Is this a new prob, ie when did this PC last work fine and what has happened since?

 

[trilks]

Well, I set the RAM speed at DDR333, and got the newest BIOS version, and so far I haven't had any troubles today. Hopefully this will last ...

This is a brand new PC, so it was never really running correctly in the first place. Its my first built-from-scratch PC, so many thanks to you guys for helping me out and showing me the ropes a bit.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Cool! I'd imagine it is a lot more to do with the BIOS update than the RAM, but I'd choose high CL numbers just to be on the safe side when you try DDR400/PC3200 speed again. Anyway run it like that for a while to see if it is truly stable. If so you can think about raising the RAM speed, if your Corsair cant hit DDR400/PC3200 then I'd make sure to contact them as they are duty bound to give you a replacement.

 

[Mingon]

Make sure you boot into safe mode and remove all traces of the previous driver

 

[trilks]

Ran it all last night and today, zero problems. The updated BIOS has it running smooth, and pretty smokin fast even before any overclocks.


Cheers for the advice, ya'll.