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.

Ok after all the following and another day wasted it still locks up.
I downloaded docmem and ran it. No problems.
Downloaded Powermax by Maxtor to check the HD
no problems.
Swapped out the memory.
Swapped out the CPU.
Swapped out the CPU Fan.
Erased the HD.
Put a HD Cooler in.
Swapped out Video Cards.
Moved the Modem to a new slot.
Disabled Onboard sound.
Reset the Bios.
Upgraded the Bios.

The only things remaining for me to do is to buy a new MB and change out the power supply.

I don't get it.

-Eric

Oh and when I left windows gave me a blue screen of death. Probably from all the lock ups and windows not shutting down properly.

According to the AOpen website, the AX34 uses the Via Apollo133 chipset. Have you installed the latest 4in1 chipset drivers? You'll get horrendous lock-ups without these drivers installed.

Also, the AGP slot might be one of Via's earlier ones that can't handle a video card with more than 16MB of RAM (32MB or more = you guessed it, lock-ups!).

The usual Via stuff:
USB ports = enabled
AGP frame buffer = 1/2 of system RAM
ACPI = disabled
APM (power management) = enabled
no cards allowed in the first PCI slot under the AGP slot
AGP slot may have to be set to 1X for stability
fast writes (if available) = disabled

Hope I've provided some useful information. Good luck. :)

Yes I downloaded the latest drivers for the via chipset from Aopen. The AGP card is a Riva 128 with 4mb ram. The only PCI card in the system is the modem which was in the second slot but I since moved it to the bottom slot.

The weird thing is that the computer was working fine until a few weeks before she moved it started doing these lockups but not very often. After she moved it happened daily, and slowly worked its way up to every hour it locks up at least once.

However, when I was running the Powermax (Caldera)program and the DocMem (Free-Dos) programs in dos mode they both ran for more than an hour and neither locked up.

Thanks,
Eric

This one's still 'busted' apparently .... so BUMP !!

I have to agree with Confus-ed, lock-ups that start slow and become more frequent combined with locking during OS installation say (to me at least) that the motherboard is dying a slow, horrible death.

I've been faced with a few systems like this, and I finally end up telling the owner "time to upgrade!".
You'll lose your mind trying to make it work, and when you finally do.....the performance and stability aren't worth the trouble you went through.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Zerotech
I have to agree with Confus-ed ...

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At the risk of compounding any confus-ed-ness ... what are you agreeing with ? 'Bump' ? ... eedmond started another thread to draw attention to this one ... so I just put 'bump' on this one to save confus-ion ... that worked well, not! :rolleyes: ;) ... but I like folk agreeing with me ! so :) ... :D ...even when I never said a word !...

I think I will get her a new MB. Switch her over to a MSI K7T Turbo board at overstock for $30. I have a spare Duron 950 lying around. I think it still uses PC100/PC133 ram.

Thanks everybody for your help.

-Eric

I was referring to the "this one's still 'busted'.." part, I thought you were talking about the motherboard. :o

Wonder if a pci video card would do the trick... But after being moved it could be anything - perhaps a hairline crack?

OK. I bought a MSI K7T Turbo board and put it in with a AMD Duron 950. Was installing ME last night. ME pops up Error Loading Explorer reinstall windows. So I reformat and reinstall again. Hour later same message. Do it again. Remember that ME had a shutdown patch on microsofts website. Downloaded the IDE HD patch. Seemed to solve things. Got most things loaded was about 98% done when I rebooted after downloading a patch. Error Loading Explorer popped up again. I Screamed! 2 AM now. Figure I would try ME one last time. Reinstalled. Froze during Installation. Rebooted. Finished Installation. Started downloading patches again. Froze again. Rebooted. Froze on startup. Finally got fed up with it. The only thing I have not replaced in this machine by now is the power supply. Pull out the LC 300W power supply. Drop in a Sparkle 250W from an old Celeron 500 System. No lockups since. Switched to 98SE. No Error loading explorer messages so far. Finally went to bed at 5am.

This computer has to be directly from hell. Worked on it from 3pm till 5am just to install windows.

-Eric