ATI Radeon 9800 Pro problem!

XtRaVaXtRaVa
edited October 2004 in Hardware
Hi, my pc is only a week old. P4 3.0ghz, 512mb ram, and my gfx card is the 128mb ati radeon 9800 pro aiw.

Today, seemingly (but not 100%) after installing an automatic update from windows (service pack 2) my pc was rebooting, and it gave me an ati restore error and restarted. It got to desktop and completely froze, rebooted again, and one of those blackout things occured where the signal seems to stop and monitor turns off.

The only way I can get my pc to start now is to load safe mode, and uninstall the display drivers for the gfx card, then start windows normally...thats what im doing now. Only problem is because I dont have any drivers on I cant play games, and everything scrolls slow etc (you know what I mean). If I use my msi ati driver cd and install a driver, after restart the same problem happens, blackout, freeze or complete crash. I tried cat 4.9 as well and the same thing. Basically I cant install any drivers. :(

Does anyone know what I could do, or have any recommendations?

Thanks in advance

Comments

  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Sounds like somethings got corrupted :(

    Ok.. first stop.. uninstall the catalysts...

    Run driver cleaner 3 to clear out any last lurking ATI gunk..

    http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/

    Then reinstall Direct X9 (get it from the microsoft website)

    Reboot.. and install the latest normal catalysts from the ATI site :)
  • XtRaVaXtRaVa
    edited September 2004
    Ok did all that, used cab and driver cleaner, reinstalled direct x, installed the new cat downloaded from ati's site.

    Rebooted, got an error saying "failed to initialise" followed by some hex, seems in reference to cat. Also got a VPU recover error, telling me it reset my graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands.

    Oh dear...
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    Have you tried.. uninstalling service pack2 ? :(

    If that doesn't solve it.. Id say.. try a reinstall of Windows clean w/sp2 BEFORE installing a new Direct X & catalysts.

    If that fails, I think you have a dud card.
  • XtRaVaXtRaVa
    edited September 2004
    Yeah I'll try doing that, just dont understand if the card is dud why it would stop working today. What could have caused it, I dont see how it could be power because my power supply is 400W, could be overheating, but surely if it was that it would have started going funny straight away or after a long time of it being overheated, not one week. My monitor is quite old, so that could explain the loss of signal causing freezes, but it wouldnt explain why it never happens in safe mode or when the drivers arent installed, especially seeing as it didnt happen once for the first week. The card couldnt have been DOA as its worked fine up to now. Any of those ideas hold water?
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    It does sound something is totally screwed in your install. If Windows works when the drivers are not loaded, something is conflicting. Hence why I got you to run Driver cleaner and reinstall DX9.

    You got time & energy to wipe it clean and reinstall Windows? If its only a week old..
  • XtRaVaXtRaVa
    edited September 2004
    Yeah I'll do a format if this last thing doesnt work, just means I need to reinstall doom 3, call of duty and far cry again :P

    The fact that it happened right after I installed windows sp2 makes it seem as though its something to do with that, especially as I read somewhere that sp2 overwrites newer cab files with its own ones etc, but thats why I thought driver/cab cleaner would work.

    But still it doesnt seem like it could be hardware, at least I hope its not. Thanks for all your help, I'll let you know what happens.
  • rykoryko new york
    edited September 2004
    Try the old yank from agp slot, look at it and say wtf it looks fine, and then re-install....don't know why but sometimes it works....
  • XtRaVaXtRaVa
    edited September 2004
    Excuse me whilst I disapear to my bathroom for 10 minutes to celebrate the amount of joy I'm currently feeling. Uninstalling windows service pack 2 and putting back on drivers worked. So I was right to assume it was sp2, good ol microsoft o.O

    Thanks once again for your help mate, twas much appreciated fella.
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    XtRaVa wrote:
    Excuse me whilst I disapear to my bathroom for 10 minutes to celebrate the amount of joy I'm currently feeling. Uninstalling windows service pack 2 and putting back on drivers worked. So I was right to assume it was sp2, good ol microsoft o.O

    Thanks once again for your help mate, twas much appreciated fella.
    ahahhaaaa :D

    Top class mate.. top class :D
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited September 2004
    Id recommend if you want sp2, download it, put it on a cd or 2nd partition, do a clean install, then run the sp2. Then install all of your drivers. I think you will find the most success with that...

    If you want to run SP2 that is...

    Good to hear you are running ok now..
  • c0rkc0rk
    edited October 2004
    I'm having the same exact problem. I definately know that it is SP2 and I have since system restored. Any idea what could be causing this and how to fix it?

    I just recentally reinstalled my OS and I would like to get SP2 installed ASAP.
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