mega_stream

My system is very unstable, either hangs or just reboots, often with the nt4disp.dll loop error commonly reported.

I've got all the latest drivers and firmware revisions installed it's still crap.

What's a recommended graphics card other than a Geoforce?
Not realy wanting to spend huge amounts, maybe if someones upgraded theirs recently wants to sell me their old one?

J

[Edited by mega_stream - 9/8/2002 9:58:22 AM]

mega_stream

Thanks for the replies guys

I've downloaded the M/B and Nvidia drivers and its been stable all afternoon, playing vids and mp3's with no probs so far.



Just seen on Dabs an Asus GeForce 4 MX440 64MB DDR AGP for £67, seems a good price, I paid £180 for this 6800 card when it first came out...just downloaded the Nvidia demo's for the GeForce4 cards and it runs terrible on my PC, might be worth getting this card me thinks



[Edited by mega_stream - 9/8/2002 7:11:22 PM]

Big Goon

Put down your full spec including mobo/memory/proc etc, is it a legit copy of XP and I'm sure we'll be able to get it sorted.

Try running your system without your soundcard for a few hours and see if that stabalises things, then any other pci cards you have to eliminate a conflict.

Try not to use the pci slot nearest to your AGP port if you can.
(your graffs card is using AGP ?)

Also if your mobo has a VIA chpset, get the 4into1 drivers from their website here.

Good luck

mega_stream

Cheers

I gotta

Abit K7RA M/B
AMD Athlon XP1800 CPU
256DDR
ASUS AGP6800 V/Card
XP Professional (pukka volume license)
Cheapy Avance PCI Sound Card
Hippauge (sp??) WinTV Card

Can't remember the rating of the PSU, will post later when I'm at home.

Been looking on that forum, I was suffering from that infinate loop error but since I installed the drivers posted on the link from DJDunk a while back I havn't actually had this error reported....its just as unstable though.
http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/threa...hreadID=102526
Seems to happen more when doing any of the following..

1) Playing video
2) Playing mp3's
3) Scolling with the mouse roller
4) Clicking a html link on a web page

As long as I'm not doing any of the above its fine

Big Goon

I'm staring at the soundcard and tv card, they look likely trouble makers to me, try your system without both and see how it behaves, altho you wont be able to play mp3's without a soundcard, so it prolly wont crash anyway.

Deffo take out the tv card for a while and swap your soundcard into a different pci slot and see what happens.

And you will certainly need to install the 4into1's to improve stability and performance.

I have read about XP/Geforce cards having problems, but typically cant find anything about it right now.

I'll have another search, I think I read somewhere that NVMax has a built in fix for XP/GF problems.

Also, get your graffs drivers from here these drivers are WHQL certified (stable).

DemonDave

iTrader: (13)

Agree with Big goon about the TV card, I have had to disable to the hardware to ensure my PC is stable ....

IWatkins

Hauppage WinTV card never caused any problems on my NT4 or Win2K setup, but does seem to cause XP to bomb quite often (at least once a day).

I only use XP for testing so I leave the card in but disable it in the Device Manager. On my home machine that runs XP for the missus, I had to actually take that card (same model of WinTV card) out to stop that machine bombing, no idea why though.

I'm also using a NVidia card (Quadro2).

Cheers

Ian

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Do not touch the gf4mx series.
They are not based on the geforce 4 GPU's like the 4200, 4400 and 4600. They are still strongly based on GF2 technology.
A GF4 4200 is a really good performer and 10 times the card that the MX is.
Please, please, please say you won't

Lokk at this for a basic idea idea of how pants the mx's are:

http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphi...418/index.html

It has lots of pretty pictures that I think you wil like

Sorry to any users on here that bought gf4mx's by choice. Just my opinion, but unfortunatly it is the truth if you are into gaming...


Cheers,

Nick

Big Goon

Where do I send the bill Mega ?

mega_stream

Hold ya horses

Rebooted itsself this morning as soon as I scrolled down with the mouse wheel

I'll have a go removing cards one by one.

mega_stream

Thanks Nick, I'll give it a miss then

Bal

I had a similiar problem.
- Nvidia TNT Riva 32mb & XP

I turned of the shadow memory in the BIOS and hey presto all problems ceased.

Bal

DemonDave

iTrader: (13)

try these links

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/lockups.htm#MOUSLOCK

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/lockups.htm

http://www.hauppauge.com/xp/faq.htm

Dave

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Just to add to the advice so far:

In the BIOS, most likely under advanced chipset, you can leave the card at AGP4x. but if enable fast writes is there, disable it.
If you can see something basically referring to AGP zero wait state, try setting the time to 1 and not 0. You can cache the Main BIOS to RAM and the VGA bios if you want to, but will actualy be slower. Make sure that cache the video ram is not set, as this was only for old cards, like Cirrus Logic etc....
You could also try altering the main AGP Driving Value. As Hanslow was thinking, you could try manually setting this to DA. This was only really an issue with the original GF2 cards though and power regulation.

Next, in XP, format a floppy disc and select copy system files.

Dowload this program:

ftp://www.canopus.com/pub/drivers/pciview.exe

and copy to floppy as is.

Reboot with the floppy in and when you get to the prompt, type 'pciview -p'
This will list what devices the machine is actively advertising that aren't being hidden/governed fully by the ACPI
This lists by component, so after making a not of the irq and description of the device, press return and it lists the next device that it finds. Keep doing this until it is finished then post some breif results on here, or power down and swap the cards aroung until you get something resembling some order.

You don't mention how you connect to the web. Serial/usb modem? PCI/usb LAN card going to broadband?

Let us know and I have some more tips for you

Cheers,

Nick

Bah! Blooming non ftp liking hyperlink thingie!

[Edited by Mr Footlong - 9/9/2002 11:09:02 AM]

mega_stream

Cheers Nick and thanks for the links Dave

I'm on Broadband, so a pci NIC installed.

I'll remove the TV card tonight, I can't remember the last time I used it anyway..

John

[Edited by mega_stream - 9/9/2002 4:26:13 PM]

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

For your motherboard, here is what the card allocation and setup that I recommend you try:

BIOS:

PnP/PCI Config Setup

PIRQ_0 set to 11

PIRQ_2 set to 9

PIRQ_3 set to 10

PIRQ_4 set to 5

Card slots:

AGP - Geforce (obviously!) (IRQ 11)

PCI Slot 2 - Soundcard (IRQ 9)

PCI Slot 4 - LAN Card (IRQ 10 shared with USB Controllers)

PCI Slot 5 - TV Card (IRQ 5)

Try this setup, but you may well have to re-enter your wan details for the network, as it may pick it up as a duplicate.

The above is a good physical setup for your board. As for whether it will help at all is another matter.....

Cheers,

Nick

Thunder77

For some of the most comprehensive tips, faq and troubleshooting try Paul's Unofficial ABIT FAQ sections ...

http://www.sudhian.com/faqs.cfm

Used this myself before on many occassions as I always had problems with my soundcard and IRQ sharing with AMD board set-up.

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

Right, what's going on with this now then........?

Mr Footlong

iTrader: (7)

'Cough'

mega_stream

Well, my system has been stable for a whole 3 days now, thanks to not having the WinTV card fitted

Could this be the cure of my problem.....we'll see

Thanks again for the time for all those that have replied

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