Ok here is the deal. I have a

AMD XP 3000+
Soyo K7ME (KM400) VIA chipset motherboard
1024 pc 2700
audigy 2 zs

and a number of graphics cards

First I had a Geforce 4 Ti 4600, direct from Nvidia. It worked great for about 2 years, no problems. Well at the end of the summer I got a free 9800 pro, so I popped that in. Immediately problems arose. Random crashes, artifacting, lockups, and automatic resets while in games and just surfing the net. First I thought my power supply was the culprit. No luck, got a 550 watt with a solid 12v rail and problems didn't go away. Next I figured it was heat, so I took the case off and put a huge fan next to it, dropping the temps ridiculously low. Problems didn't go away. I ran memtest on the RAM, I reformatted a number of times, and I tried tons of different Radeon drives. I dropped the AGP to 4x, that helped a little.

So I figure it is a faulty card, even though it worked fine in a friends computer for a year. Yesterday I got a 6800, unistalled the radeon drivers, and popped it in. Installed the latest forceware. No more artifacting, and the lockups aren't fatal anymore, last 15 seconds and then its back to normal, and happen every 5-10 minues. That is fine for single player gaming, but ****es me off when I'm playing CS Source. Also, it has had one random reset since the card has been in.

Then I did some research, and saw my VIA drivers might be the culprit. I followed a guide I found on VIAarena and switched to microsoft's agp drivers, and it still crashes. 5.1.2600.2800 from microsoft are what I currently am using. I tried to upgrade the 4in1s, but when I double clicked the latest exe it only offered to upgrade my ide and something else, not my agp, so my agp drivers stayed at the old vias that came with my mobo.

Any help would be great.

:smiley: Hey Dihnekis,

Welcome to PCHF. We have a great team of techs here and I am sure that we will be able to help you solve this mystery.

It sure sounds as if you have been very busy with this. Excellent job on the troubleshooting. Have you tried reinstalling the Geforce 4 Ti 4600 card to see if that card now behaves poorly as well? Also, are you sure that your PC is completely updated?

Unfortunately, Hardware is not my area of expertise, however, I am sure that one of our hardware gurus will be online shortly and have a number of suggestions for you.

Keep an eye open for their posts.

TTFN

LGW

Thanks for the reply.

The only thing that I have not tried so far is updating my motherboard bios, which I'm going to do in a few minutes. I hope that helps, but I'm beginning to suspect that my cheap motherboard is just not up to the task of running these power hungry cards (9800 pro, 6800). My geforce was a lot older and less taxing. I hate to get rid of my motherboard though, simply because of the work involved, and the money. Right now I have a microatx motherboard, and pc2700 ram... if I invested in a new motherboard, I would want to get out of my crappy microATX case, which would be another good deal of money, and then get better ram because it is supported. Also, since I'm buying all that I might as well go ahead and get an AMD 64 processor, which leads to a ton of other things, such as PCIe.... and I really can't afford any of that right now.

OK, I hear what you are saying, if it is possible to get one of these vid cards to work with your current system, that is the way you would like it to go. However, you have not answered my question regarding trying the old vid card in the current system to determine whether any thing else could have been affected.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Sorry about that, I started writing the reply with your question in mind and forgot about it halfway through.

No, I haven't tried the ti 4600, because I gave it away sadly. I still have the 9800 pro, but since I know that doesn't work I see no sense it trying it again.

The thing that is annoying me the most are the competely random reboots right in the middle of whatever I am doing. Also, I can't leave my computer on anymore because it just reboots, cancelling whatever I was doing, or closing winamp so my alarm clock doesn't go off in the morning.

OK, we'll work around that, are you able to boot into Safe Mode? tapping F8 until the menu comes up, and then using your arrow keys to manuver to the Safe Mode option, then hit Enter.

Look forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Maybe it are/where 2 separete problems , first (maybe) a faulty vga card And second after switching cards , the problems you still have now sound more like malware problems to me.

Can you follow the instructions in the "Prework" link below and post the 2 resulting log files to check that out?