Help: GeForce 5200 FX ("Plus") Blacks out

[YetAnotherSteve]

Hi Folks-
The holiday season has brought new games for the kids, which require
a new Video card on my Micron Millennia XV, running Windows ME, so I went from an NVIDIA Vanta Lt to a GeForce 5200 FX (Maddog "Commander") AGP 4x/8x 128 MB

After a few attempts, I have tried alternately installing the drivers with the CD and those directly from NVIDIA. Quite frequently the installation wants
to reinstall the monitor as well. Then, when I reboot, things are ok
(BIOS screen OK, Windows splash ok) and then the screen goes black but
for a flashing line cursor, which eventually goes away and the monitor loses synch. Sometimes this happens immediately, sometimes I even get to my desktop and move around a little, and then it happens.

I can escape by going to safe mode, removing the drivers, and then rebooting before reinstalling. I've also tried to minimize and maximize
hardware acceleration.

Here's the kicker: It is a dual boot Linux/Windows machine, and the Linux side recognized the card fine, installed its drivers, and has no such problem. In fact, I chose an NVIDIA card because of the Linux side of things. Anyway, this leads me to believe that it is hooked up correctly, and there are no real hardware incompatibilties, although various bits of the machine are rather "old" by computer standards. I did upgrade the Power supply to 250 W, but I tested it with the old card first, which was fine,
so except for a lack of power with the new card I don't think that is the
problem.

I have installed DX 9.0c (actually it was installed and working fine with the Vanta LT...). I also have (previous to this upgrade) what I believe are the latest Chipset drivers from VIA installed, although I need to check on that.
The BIOS is rather old, and does not have much in terms of AGP options, just Enable 4x mode (which was and is enabled) and Aperture size (I've tried 64 MB and 128 MB), so I may upgrade that and maybe something will happen, however, since the Linux side works I'd think the BIOS is ok.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that the Windows based drivers are trying to do something with the card that the Linux side is not, such as
driving the refresh rate too high (I found this one this morning, have yet to try fixing the refresh rate). Anybody else have any ideas?


Here's some hopefully useful (and not excessive) hardware info - more
can be provided if requested - this was generated with the Vanta in, I can redo it with the 5200 FX

Computer:
Operating System Microsoft Windows ME
OS Service Pack -
Internet Explorer 6.0.2800.1106 (IE 6.0 SP1)
DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)

Motherboard:
CPU Type AMD Duron, 800 MHz (8 x 100)
Motherboard Name Unknown
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8363(A) Apollo KT133(A)
System Memory 320 MB (SDRAM)
BIOS Type Award Medallion (10/02/00)

Motherboard Properties:
Motherboard ID 10/02/2000-8363-686A-6A6LMG59C-00

Manufacturer GVC
Product AR862
Version B01

Front Side Bus Properties:
Bus Type DEC Alpha EV6
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 100 MHz (DDR)
Effective Clock 200 MHz
Bandwidth 1600 MB/s

Memory Bus Properties:
Bus Type SDR SDRAM
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 133 MHz
Effective Clock 133 MHz
Bandwidth 1067 MB/s

Chipset Bus Properties:
Bus Type PCI
Bus Width 32-bit
Real Clock 33 MHz
Effective Clock 33 MHz
Bandwidth 133 MB/s


Monitor Properties:
Monitor Name B1570MNSL [NoDB]
Monitor ID MIP1501
Model B1570MNSL
Manufacture Date Week 43 / 2000
Serial Number 06379
Max. Visible Display Size 28 cm x 21 cm (13.8")
Picture Aspect Ratio 4:3
Horizontal Frequency 30 - 69 kHz
Vertical Frequency 50 - 120 Hz
Gamma 2.88
DPMS Mode Support Standby, Suspend, Active-Off

[ BIOS ]

BIOS Type Award Medallion
Award BIOS Type Award Medallion BIOS v6.00PG
Award BIOS Message AR862 BIOS REV 1.04
System BIOS Date 10/02/00
Video BIOS Date 08/01/00

Size 256 KB
Boot Devices Floppy Disk, Hard Disk, CD-ROM, ATAPI ZIP, LS-120
Capabilities Flash BIOS, Shadow BIOS, Selectable Boot, EDD
Supported Standards DMI, APM, ACPI, ESCD, PnP
Expansion Capabilities ISA, PCI, AGP, USB

[ System devices / VIA CPU to AGP controller ]

Device Properties:
Driver Description VIA CPU to AGP controller
Driver Date 12/27/2002
Driver Version 4.9.0.3441
Driver Provider VIA Technologies, Inc.
INF File C:\WINDOWS\INF\INTERNET\VIATEC~1.INF
Hardware ID PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_8305&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_00,PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_8305&SUBSYS_00000000,PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_8305&REV_00,PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_8305,PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_8305&REV_00&CC_0604,PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_8305&CC_060400,PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_8305&CC_0604

Device Resources:
Memory D4000000-D5FFFFFF
Memory D6000000-D7FFFFFF
Port 0000-FFFF

[Radical Dreamer]

You mention you had an old vanta installed which leads me to believe you probably had some old drivers with it at least at one point or another, try blowing them out with http://www.guru3d.com/detonator-destroyer/ and then reboot and try the install again. If that doesnt work, try going to safe mode and setting the refresh and resolution to something super safe like 640x480 @ 60hz and then reboot and see if it works

[YetAnotherSteve]

Well, did try that among other things:
- got a hold of dd, removed driver via install/unistall, then ran it. Pop up window did say NVIDIA Vanta at top, and gave a empty text field. Clicking
delete popped up a window saying "Couldn't parse string" or something to that effect, clikcing on that OK brought up confirmation window for removing all NVIDIA drivers, clicking OK brought up "Cleaning finished" window. Expected behavior?

-Noticed in 3D guru forum some FAQ about VIA KTxxx chipsets:
1) the 4in1 drivers from viaarena.(com?) have an advertiesed date of
Oct '01 or something, but there is some suspicion that the drivers inside the
zip file are considerably newer than that. So I redownloaded and ran the
upgrade for this.
2) there is a special "issue" with this chipset where some register gets overwhelmed but there is a patch to solve the problem by closing the register.
cf. http://www.guru3d.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43131

- Have managed to get the override refresh rate in dxdiag to 60 Hz, and the adapter setting to "Adapter default"

Sill nada, sorta. The card actually works "fine" in 640x480 16 color mode (not 16 bit, 16 color (== 4 bit)!) w/ full graphics acceleration. However, as soon as any more sophisticated graphics mode is used, sometime within 5 minutes after reboot, the screen goes black.

Somtimes CTL_ALT_DEL brings up a blue "System is BUSY waiting for close window" screen which is visible. Continuing sometimes causes
the monitor to turn black again and display "FREQ OUT OF RANGE" and
sometimes not. Other times CTL_ALT_DEL does nothing (well, I cannot
see the screen, so I don't really know) but issuing another one does reboot.

My suspicions:
a) Some process is asking for a higher mode, which makes the card drive at frequencies beyond the capability of the monitor
b) There is something screwy with IRQs, since a frequent suggestion is
that on needs to assign an IRQ to the VGA in BIOS, and my old
version of BIOS doesn't have that option. (I do not have onboard video,
so there is nothing to disable there-aother frequent suggestion). I am
awaiting a response from esupport regarding a BIOS upgrade.
c) Some advanced feature (overlays?) is screwing things up.
d) Power is lacking, or temperature is too high?
e) Something else is really screwed up with this system. There are a certain amount of non-repeatable seemingly random errors in various
"updating the hardware database" processes - an example, got an
"error loading auhknew.dll" Anyone know a good program to check the
consistency of the drivers, registry, etc?

In addition, the nvidia display settings (nwiz, I guess) program does not
function in 16 color mode, so it is not trivial to tune the driver - you can ask for a higher mode, and use the limited time window before the screen
blacks out to try to change things, (disallow application control of video
settings, etc) but this is rather difficult. Perhaps there is a way
to start a text-mode version of nwiz

Other suggestions? Keep in mind, it works with Linux (Mandrake 9.2 drivers out of the box) else I wouldn't be able to make this entry, which makes me think it isn't a power/temperature/bios issue (but maybe these things are system load dependent...) I've got a few days before I return the card and get my money back.
I might try to get a hold of a different monitor, and/or reinstall the old
card to check the rest of the system out (with what? need suggestion) and upgrade the BIOS.

[SolApathy]

Ok...I am just going to make one simple recommendation. Uninstall Windows ME, go out and get yourself Windows 98SE. (Windows XP is not recommended due to the age of your system & the performance requirements).

ME was the worst OS ever put out by microsoft with exception to Windows 95.

It is inefficient, incredibly buggy, hogs memory like the cookie monster eats cookies and made the acronym BSOD a household name (Blue Screen of Death)


you will find yourself a lot more pleased with that OS installed.

In addition, your monitor (B1570MNSL) I would suggest you shell out $50 (at the minimum) and get a decent monitor. With a max 1024x768 res/60Hz not only is it tiny, the refresh rate alone will give you headaches.

Most likely the OS is forcing a 1024X768@75HZ when you are booting and that is causing your synch problems.

boot into windows Safe mode. remove all drivers for the video card, look in add-remove programs to verify there is nothing hanging around there & reboot & re-install the drivers for your card.

[BOB IROC]

(Windows XP is not recommended due to the age of your system & the performance requirements).

XP should run fine on that system. It has plenty of Ram. I have put XP on machines as slow as 350Mhz with integrated video and as long as the ram is above 256MB it runs pretty darn good. I would recommend XP as it is more stable than any Win9x version out there. I do agree that WinBlows Me is got to be the worst version of windows I have seen.

[SolApathy]

yes, it will run on it, no doubt. I can get it to run on a DX4-100, but I still would not recommend it. He really doesn't need XP if it's just for his kids & gaming. 98SE would be perfect for them...And I think mot ppl would agree that 98SE was quite stable.

the original 98 had some issues, but the SE resolved most of those issues.

[YetAnotherSteve]

Just thought I'd finish the story.
First, thanks for all the suggestions-The idea was not to invest in
a new operating system, so I didn't follow up on those.

One still fairly old piece of the puzzle was the BIOS, so I contacted
esupport for an upgrade. They claimed this "blacking out" feature was
indeed due to the fact that my BIOS was not fully ACPI compliant, and
wasn't delivering the necessary power to the card. So I got an upgrade from
them, which seemed to go okay while it happened, but after that the motherboard would not even power up. I swapped power supplies, I checked
the switch, I tried to reset the CMOS, but I didn't even get any attempt
to spin the fan. Goodbye motherboard. Kudos to esupport for
refunding my money (legally, I don't think they had to, but they did).

Having learned my lesson about upgrading way outdated equipment, I went
out and got an entirely new system (kudos to Kingston for accepting a return
on additional memory for the now dead motherboard,
ordered when it was still with the living). New system is nice, fast, with useful hardware not available in 2001, and up and running
(dual boot Windows XP/Mandrake 10.1).

Again, thanks for the suggestions. Never really found out if it was the ACPI,
but the story is over.