w2k installation trouble (ati radeon, amd xp1500)

[cfig 0]

Hi all, found this forum when trying to troubleshoot some prbs..

 

Experiencing some weird problems when trying to get my PC to run w2k. Just brought my pc back to life with some new hardware, and tried to install w2k on the new hard drive (w98se on the old).

 

everything appears to work fine, but w2k won't recognize my Radeon7500 video card. Whenever I install drivers for it the screen just garbles up when the system start. I can hear the start-up song playing, so I think the system is ok, just broken graphics. Reboot in safe mode, uninstall vid-drivers, and try another set of drivers (done it about 10 times now), but no luck. ;( ;(

 

did a new fresh install of w2k, but the same thing happened. Even got it do auto-reboot when loaded (no matter whether I go safe mode, it just loads up and just as it's about to give the login-screen, it just reboots).. I underclocked my cpu/ram, took out the other HD, updated everything from microsoft.com before installing vid-drivers etc.. but no success.. So I'm back to Win98..

 

My system is:

AGP Radeon 7500 (not ATI branded, though)

MSI KT3 Ultra MB

AMD XP 1500

WD 80GB hd (FAT32)

Power supply is 300w

 

Any ideas on what's wrong?

 

Wondering if I need to buy XP or another vid-card to get a stabile gaming OS up'n running on this box..

[jmmijo 1]

You say you updated device drivers however did you make sure to update the VIA 4in1 driver pack ?!?

 

The KT3 series uses the VIA chipset so you'll want to make sure this is installed before installing the video drivers.

 

Try this and see what happens.

[Tomay 0]

Almost sure this is it. Install this before the graphic drivers http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=300

[cfig 0]

Thanks for replies guys..

 

Yes, I did use the 4in1 via driver. Did another fresh install now, with no improvements. Dicked around a bit with the driver files, and the 4in1 install puts a file called VIAAGP1.SYS in /winnt/system32/drivers . If I remove the file, it boots just fine but with a device error on the AGP - CPU connection. With the file in place, the screen is garbled. Tried everything I can think of, including changing all bios-settings to a crawl, even updated the bios. But my system is cursed!

 

well, so be it, I'll be running good 'ol Win98 now, and my next PC upgrade will have all Intel components from start to finish..

 

Thanks again!

[jmmijo 1]

Weird, only because I can't recall having an issue like this 8)

 

Since it's the same equipment but just a dual-boot OS config, I do that with my new gaming rig and it runs fine. Of course it's an Intel chipset rig, but my old one was a VIA/Athlon config and it ran fine with 98-SE, then an upgrade to Win 2K Pro then finally Win XP Pro.

 

I build Windows boxes for a living and I also install all three OS's on varying chipset/cpu configs and haven't come across this kind of problem without it being hardware related.

[pmistry 0]

What brand is the Radeon card?

 

Have you tried manufacturer drivers instead of ATI Third party drivers?

 

Try older revisions of the VIA 4-In-1's.

 

Try installing the VIA AGP driver in standard mode first and see if it works.

 

Lower the AGP Aperture memory size in the BIOS to 64 megs or 32 megs.

 

Is the card overclocked? Try underclocking it.

 

Check to ensure that FAST WRITES are off in the BIOS?

 

Set the AGP drive strength to AUTO in the BIOS.

 

Try all of those and see if the problem persists.

[roshan_secret 0]

hi guy i'am also having this kind of problem. my pc reboots again and again.I think that ur problem is with ur motherboard and ur video card.

Check the voltage of ur video card n c if ur motherboard supports this voltage.

 

U can obtain these info in ur manuals or drivers cd-rom

bye!!