We sell Diamond Viper 550 cards in most of our systems. We have run into a problem where according to bootlog.txt, the video card drivers are causing a 30 second delay upon boot. The delay is very noticeable. When the system finally boots up however, the card performs as it should. There are long delays when changing color depth and resolution also. We have had the same problem with an Asus Geforce card as well.
We've used the Diamond driver 3.68 as well as various Nvidia reference drivers (up to 5.22) with the same problem. The only way we've been able get this to stop occurring is to use the Viper 550 with the old Diamond drivers (the .255 drivers) or the old Detonator 2.08, but this clearly does not help with a Geforce card from Asus, and we haven't been happy about using old drivers even with the V550.
This problem has occurred on various motherboards using various chipsets (Via MVP3C, Via KX133, AMD 750). It happens with various speeds of cpu's and has been occurring for many months now. It has happened with Windows 98SE as well as the first edition. We've use AGP drivers and IRQ
routers for all affected motherboards, as well as the latest bioses. It all seems to point at Nvidia, but we have no way to directly contact them. I tried sending them the support form on their site a few times but never got a response, and the latest drivers still have not fixed this.
I have the bootlog files that we made with this problem occurring as
well as a gif file showing the delay available on my website at http://www.datacruz.com/~amartin/nvidia if you wish to look at them.
These files were made with the Asus card installed, but using nvidia reference drivers and the exact same thing occurred with the V550. It's something either in nvmini.vxd or nvcore.vxd (which is the only thing between nvmini starting and successfully starting in the bootlog)
If anyone has had this problem and knows a way to fix it, please let me know either here or email [email protected].
Thanks a lot!
Andrew Martin
C&P Distributing Technical Support