Riva 128 Problem

I have a computer with a
AOpen AX34 MB
Celeron 400
256mb ram
Win ME (Yuck, I know)

Windows seems to lock up whenever the video card settings is set to ANYTHING other than 640x480x16 colors. I don't know why. I replaced the Riva 128 card with an identical one that I know works and the new one shows the display in the upper 1/4 of the display almost as if the display is trying to show larger than the monitor can handle. You are unable to read anything. It is all a white blur. But this happens in dos mode and everything. It is quite perplexing to me. The Monitor is a Envision 19" monitor. Bought it last Thanksgiving. Not sure of the model number.

This happend after the lady moved. There were no problem prior to moving.


Any Ideas?

-Eric

Exactly which drivers are you using? Here are the latest Have you been to safe mode and removed all instances of display adapters? Have you forced the use of a pci vga card and then reinstalled the correct video drivers?

Is this a pci or agp? Have you tried a different slot if pci, a different make or a pci one if agp? That should give you a few things to work on!

AGP cards. Tried the STB Riva 128 drivers that were in WinME (original drivers). Uninstalled that and installed the Nvidia ones (latest version) and it didn't work either. Did the same thing. Do not have PCI card available for testing.

-Eric

Do you have another make of agp card? Somehow you have got to test the hardware...

Test the monitor and that card on another system.

I might be able to get another agp card. I did try the 2nd Riva 128 (the one that scrunched the screen up into 1/4 of the monitor) in another machine and it worked fine. Will have to wait till Friday to do anymore testing and to get the other video card. Will let you know.

-Eric

faulty board? damaged monitor?

try another card as suggested.

I tried an another AGP card a ATI Rage 128 Pro. This card worked for about 10 minutes before ME locked up. Gonna try a PCI card Monday and a new Monitor. If that doesn't work gonna reformat the HD and reinstall ME.

If you have any better suggestions let me know,
Eric

Yes, reset the bios to defaults in the setup on boot.

May have some daft video setting in there....

I updated the Bios from R1.14 to R1.16. When I did this this reset the defaults. ME still locked up.

-Eric

corrupt windows, try get the user to go back to 98 or up to 2k/xp.

Ya, I think the HD needs formating. She called last night and said it is now locking up on her in 640x480x16 mode. Gonna reformat it tonight.

Thanks all for the suggestions,
Eric

Well, I reformatted the HD and reinstalled Win ME locked up on me twice while installing. Could it be the RAM then? Gonna replace the ram now and see if it solves the problem.

-Eric

Quote:

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Originally posted by eedmond
Well, I reformatted the HD and reinstalled Win ME locked up on me twice while installing. Could it be the RAM then? Gonna replace the ram now and see if it solves the problem.

-Eric

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Good call.....quite possibly bad RAM.

Well I swapped ram. It still locked up. If the HD was overheating would it cause these lockups? It is only a 30GB 5400RPM Maxtor hd though. But when I felt it, it was quite hot. Not so hot I couldn't handle it but much hotter then the 2nd hard drive in the system which is a 4g WD.

Gonna try a HD fan on it tomorrow. I checked the CPU heat settings and it is running at about 130degrees according to the bios. I think that is within norm for a 400 Celeron PPGA chip.

Running out of ideas other than using it for shooting practice and buying a new one.

-Eric

Could be ram timings.... or it doesn't like that type of ram...

Run docmem from simmtester.com create the boot disk by double clicking the downloaded file, run the quicktest first, if that shows nothing run the burn in.