Hi
About half a year ago i decided to upgrade my current computer with a new graphics card - a Radeon 9800pro manufactured by no less than ATI themselves (their reference board).
Despite being from Denmark, Europe I bought the card as new by a retailer from USA, i was aware that this would complicate matters if i had troubles with the card - but believe me, i had money to save from the retail price in Denmark...
Shortly after ordering the card i recieved and installed it in Denmark - apparently everthing was in order - until a couple of weeks later when i got my first spontaneus reboot.
I have been working with computers for a long time, been building all my friends computers, and have been working in a computer shop myself for some years (unfortunately i quitted the job a couple of years ago), so i wouldnt consider myself as a newb.
Well, as it turned out it wasnt just a simple case of "one random reboot" - the reboots would come 1-3 times a day - in all kinds of applications - just in idle windows - in 3d games and in programs like word - it didnt seem to have any relation to how hard my computer (or graphics card) worked ... (my computer is on 24/7 so really 2-3 crashes a day isnt that much)...
This however complicated my troubleshooting since i would not be able to test changes immedeatly, however this is what i did to try to resolve the problem (and it sure took me many hours)
- first i tried reformatting the system - several times, tried with the original drivers and the updated drivers from ati
- i updated all my other drivers (mobo, soundcard, tv-card so on)
- i tried too free and change as many interrupts and DMA's as possible
- I ran memtest86 several times without it finding any problems whatsoever with my RAM
- i bought a new PSU (Aopen 450watt) for my system to rule out any PSU related problems
- i disabled automatic reboot of windows when ocurring critical errors - but i still didnt get any blue error screen - the computer simply just reboots as if i had pushed reset
- i tried updating the BIOS and changing all kinds of settings (Ram timings, AGP apaeture size and so on - only one setting seemed to make a difference - the AGP voltage - it seemed that when i forced AGP into 1.6 volts instead of auto it became more stable regarding reboots - however this meant that i couldnt really play any 3d games, since the system would crash (not crash as in reboot, more like crash into VPU recover) (this was why i bought a new PSU in the first place)
- i tried removing all extension cards possible (Tv-tuner, soundcard, netcard so on)
- i tried testing the direct 3d through dxdiag - no luck
.... so in the end ... i gave up ... i simply stopped playing computer games and ran the agp power on a permanently 1.6volts ... until this day.... now the reboots have come back to haunt me - and i havent made a single hardware change since then - now it seems that the computer doesnt care what voltage at all my AGP port is running at .... and since im a medical student now - i am in no position to buy new equipment (such as a new graphics card) so i turn to you - the experts - to come up with an advice that may or may not help my computer become more stable - have you ever heard of a similar problem - or a soloution to this?
...of course the easiest thing would be sending the graphics card overseas - since all the troubles started when i installed the radeon 9800 pro but that would mean a lot of shipping costs - and worst of all - a lot of waiting time without a computer - i hope you can help me instead, here's my computer specs:
Motherboard: Asus A7V8X (VIA KT400 chipset)
Ram: 512 megs of PC2100 RAM never failed before
CPU: AMD Athlon XP thouroughbred 2400+ (2.0ghz) - NEVER overclocked
Graphics card: ATI Radeon 9800pro - refernce card - NEVER overclocked
NorthQ 400Watts PSU - and a Aopen 450watts ( tried both without any luck)
Lite on DVD-ROM
MSI DVD-writer
Seagate barracuda IV - 40gb HDD
Samsung Spinpoint Sp1614N - 160gb HDD
Accton netcard (current disabled in favor of onboard LAN - but of course i tried disabling that without any luck)
Hauppuage WinTV-Theater
Soundblaster 128 PCI (tried using onboard sound as well - no luck)
CPU-Fan: Powerful thermaltake model
Software: Win XP pro - fully updated with SP 2
Please let me note this, my errors have NOTHING to do with motherboad nor CPU temperature - i wont rule out that there could be too high a temperature in the GPU - but i find that hardly unlikely taken in consideration that i have never overclocked it - and that its a reference board from ATI
Well anyway, im open to any suggestions (that havent already been tried)
Thx for you time
Jens Andersen
About half a year ago i decided to upgrade my current computer with a new graphics card - a Radeon 9800pro manufactured by no less than ATI themselves (their reference board).
Despite being from Denmark, Europe I bought the card as new by a retailer from USA, i was aware that this would complicate matters if i had troubles with the card - but believe me, i had money to save from the retail price in Denmark...
Shortly after ordering the card i recieved and installed it in Denmark - apparently everthing was in order - until a couple of weeks later when i got my first spontaneus reboot.
I have been working with computers for a long time, been building all my friends computers, and have been working in a computer shop myself for some years (unfortunately i quitted the job a couple of years ago), so i wouldnt consider myself as a newb.
Well, as it turned out it wasnt just a simple case of "one random reboot" - the reboots would come 1-3 times a day - in all kinds of applications - just in idle windows - in 3d games and in programs like word - it didnt seem to have any relation to how hard my computer (or graphics card) worked ... (my computer is on 24/7 so really 2-3 crashes a day isnt that much)...
This however complicated my troubleshooting since i would not be able to test changes immedeatly, however this is what i did to try to resolve the problem (and it sure took me many hours)
- first i tried reformatting the system - several times, tried with the original drivers and the updated drivers from ati
- i updated all my other drivers (mobo, soundcard, tv-card so on)
- i tried too free and change as many interrupts and DMA's as possible
- I ran memtest86 several times without it finding any problems whatsoever with my RAM
- i bought a new PSU (Aopen 450watt) for my system to rule out any PSU related problems
- i disabled automatic reboot of windows when ocurring critical errors - but i still didnt get any blue error screen - the computer simply just reboots as if i had pushed reset
- i tried updating the BIOS and changing all kinds of settings (Ram timings, AGP apaeture size and so on - only one setting seemed to make a difference - the AGP voltage - it seemed that when i forced AGP into 1.6 volts instead of auto it became more stable regarding reboots - however this meant that i couldnt really play any 3d games, since the system would crash (not crash as in reboot, more like crash into VPU recover) (this was why i bought a new PSU in the first place)
- i tried removing all extension cards possible (Tv-tuner, soundcard, netcard so on)
- i tried testing the direct 3d through dxdiag - no luck
.... so in the end ... i gave up ... i simply stopped playing computer games and ran the agp power on a permanently 1.6volts ... until this day.... now the reboots have come back to haunt me - and i havent made a single hardware change since then - now it seems that the computer doesnt care what voltage at all my AGP port is running at .... and since im a medical student now - i am in no position to buy new equipment (such as a new graphics card) so i turn to you - the experts - to come up with an advice that may or may not help my computer become more stable - have you ever heard of a similar problem - or a soloution to this?
...of course the easiest thing would be sending the graphics card overseas - since all the troubles started when i installed the radeon 9800 pro but that would mean a lot of shipping costs - and worst of all - a lot of waiting time without a computer - i hope you can help me instead, here's my computer specs:
Motherboard: Asus A7V8X (VIA KT400 chipset)
Ram: 512 megs of PC2100 RAM never failed before
CPU: AMD Athlon XP thouroughbred 2400+ (2.0ghz) - NEVER overclocked
Graphics card: ATI Radeon 9800pro - refernce card - NEVER overclocked
NorthQ 400Watts PSU - and a Aopen 450watts ( tried both without any luck)
Lite on DVD-ROM
MSI DVD-writer
Seagate barracuda IV - 40gb HDD
Samsung Spinpoint Sp1614N - 160gb HDD
Accton netcard (current disabled in favor of onboard LAN - but of course i tried disabling that without any luck)
Hauppuage WinTV-Theater
Soundblaster 128 PCI (tried using onboard sound as well - no luck)
CPU-Fan: Powerful thermaltake model
Software: Win XP pro - fully updated with SP 2
Please let me note this, my errors have NOTHING to do with motherboad nor CPU temperature - i wont rule out that there could be too high a temperature in the GPU - but i find that hardly unlikely taken in consideration that i have never overclocked it - and that its a reference board from ATI
Well anyway, im open to any suggestions (that havent already been tried)
Thx for you time
Jens Andersen
