video card problems

[malkaven]

Recently i bought a geforce 2 mx400
specs can be found here...
http://www.inno3d.com/product_mx.html

When i installed the video card and booted up Windows detected the card fine. It asked for drivers so i installed the drivers i got with the card. It installed them fine with no errors and it told you I had to restart my computer. Once I restart it goes to the windows loading screen, and my speakers play the windows start up sound but there is no video at all. Completely black. So i went to the geforce website and tried the detonator drivers and the same thing occured. My old video card was a voodoo 3 3000, I reformated and tried installing the geforce card fresh (thinking maybe the drivers were conflicting) same problem occured.

anyways ive beaten my brain in on this problem for months I really would like this card working, please help.

here are the specs on my motherboard.
http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?id=77

I have a pentuim 2 350, 385 megs of ram and a Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 70m monitor.


if you need any other info please ask thank you

[EastSt]

If that's an old monitor, then it may not work with that video card. If you can, try another monitor.
Thats all i got, good luck...

[malkaven]

its a fairly new monitor...about 1 year old. I tried with my other monitor and it did the same

[tricktx]

The only things i can think of are...

1. Try installing you Voodo agin if you have it because somthing may have happened unrelated to swapping your graphics cards.

2. If you have powerstrip running at startup, take it off because it did this to my monitor.

3. Like EastSt said check the monitor but dont go and buy a new one stright away. See if you can borrow one of a friend, because i know how frustrating it is to buy somthing to fix somthing and find out that the problems not related.

4. Check you have the CORRECT video drivers, try downloading the older detonators 12x or below.

5. Go to start menu, run and type MSCONFIG. and go to the startup tab and make a list of whats ticked anfd whats not. Untick evrything apart from Scanreg,Systray and Explorer.

Thats all can think of at this time, post again if you think of anything else that may help..


Richard

[dawgtuff]

Hate to say it, but it seems like you did'nt get rid of the Voodoo drivers. This is a problem when installing a completley different vid card.

Did you format your harddrive or just reinstall your OS?

[malkaven]

tricktx>> I did put the voodoo card back in and my computer detected it and my monitor, rebooted and everything was working. im not sure what you mean on number 2. take my monitor off the powerstrip and plug into wall? or is there a program called powerstrip? i dont have it if there is. Also i unchecked everything in the startup tab. There was quite a few things to be unchecked but the card does the same thing. I also just tried the 23.11 drivers(older ones before the denator) and the same thing happened with all 3 of the drivers.


dawgtuff>> i did a complete format. Its able to get in safe mode with the geforce card to. A friend told me the best way to get rid of my voodoo drivers is to use find and search for all of the 3dfx files and delete them. This is how ive been removing the drivers...but like i said i did try and complete format w/ the geforce card in. Maybe im missing something?

[DABSON!~]

Originally posted by malkaven
Recently i bought a geforce 2 mx400
specs can be found here...
http://www.inno3d.com/product_mx.html

When i installed the video card and booted up Windows detected the card fine. It asked for drivers so i installed the drivers i got with the card. It installed them fine with no errors and it told you I had to restart my computer. Once I restart it goes to the windows loading screen, and my speakers play the windows start up sound but there is no video at all. Completely black. So i went to the geforce website and tried the detonator drivers and the same thing occured. My old video card was a voodoo 3 3000, I reformated and tried installing the geforce card fresh (thinking maybe the drivers were conflicting) same problem occured.

anyways ive beaten my brain in on this problem for months I really would like this card working, please help.

here are the specs on my motherboard.
http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?id=77

I have a pentuim 2 350, 385 megs of ram and a Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 70m monitor.


if you need any other info please ask thank you

First I alway's say can you install this card in another PC and see if the card is defective.

[DABSON!~]

Make sure you unistall the card and boot into VGA Mode then reboot again and install the drivers!!

[malkaven]

ok i made sure i thoroughly removed all the drivers from my old card. Made sure it was on the plain old vga drivers and installed the card.

now instead of going into windows it gets the the windows loading screen and stays there for a bit then reboots automaticaly.

This card works in my friends computer i tested it out when i got the card.

[malkaven]

not sure if it matters but im using win 98 se

[deadkenny]

You stated that you manually deleted all of the drivers for your old card, but did you 'remove' the old card from Control Panel - System - Device manager?

[malkaven]

yes i removed the voodoo from the devices list.

[deadkenny]

So, basically you get a picture with the new card when you first boot using the default VGA drivers. But when you re-boot after installing the proper video card drivers you get nothing (i.e. no picture at all). Exactly which drivers have you tried installing?

[malkaven]

deadkenny>> Now what happens, I boot up and it uses the
default drivers and once i install the drivers for the card and reboot it gets to the windows screen*and instead of going in windows like i said before) it automaticaly reboots by itself. I have tried using the drivers that came with the card from the cd and the newest detonator drivers at www.nvidia.com

[deadkenny]

Well, if it boots OK intially and lets you get into Windows using the default VGA drivers, it sounds like the problem is software rather than hardware (i.e. the drivers). Try getting hold of some older drivers (det 23.11 would be a good place to start, but you might go back to 12 series if necessary). I have heard of people having problems with the latest det drivers with older cards. The latest dets are more for the GeForce3 and 4 cards.

[malkaven]

deadkenny >> Ok i have now tested 3 sets of drivers. The detonator drivers (28.32) once i installed them and rebooted the comp would auto reboot like i said before once it was at the windows screen. Now i have tried drivers 27.30 and 12.20 like you said to and the problem changed back to what i said from the begining.(hangs at the windows screen but i can hear the windows start sounds but cant see anything). One thing i noticed is once the sound plays i hear a error messege come up(really doesnt do me to good since i cant read it). hmmmm.... any ideas?

also I dont know if this matters but the video cards bios shows on the screen when i reboot(like it should)....maybe this rules out something i dont know, just thought id give it a mention.

[Tweb]

I had this problem. I changed monitors an the new monitor CAN'T handle the last refresh rate I was using. I had to barrow my friends monitor that could handle 100 hz @ 1280 X 1024, boot my computer an change the refresh rate to 60 hz @ 800 X 600, shut down computer - hook up new monitor - reboot an Alls well.

[deadkenny]

Yes, I think Tweb might have it. The only thing I can think of at this point is that you have encountered two distinct problems. First, with the lastest drivers there's a compatibility problem, causing the automatic reboot. Second, with the older drivers, it 'works' (i.e. no software problem) but your monitor can't handle the default settings (refresh rate etc.) so you get no picture. Any way you can borrow another monitor in order to get into Windows and change the video settings? It might also help if you first install the proper drivers for your particular monitor, rather than just the generic VGA monitor drivers.

[malkaven]

is there anyway to do this w/o a different monitor? I still have my voodoo 3. I just dont think ill have access to a good monitor like that.

[malkaven]

i just noticed something. under display it says unknown monitor but in safe mode it reconizes the monitor. When i change back to my voodoo 3 it finds the voodoo 3(after i reinstall the drivers for the voodoo) and the monitor again...is this normal?

Might be that my monitor can handle it but it isnt using the right drivers for some reason. When i install the geforce drivers and reboot it forgets the monitor drivers. Or it could be normal for the monitor to do this hehe

[Xyllian]

I am having the EXACT same problem as Malkaven but with a Leadtek Winfast GeForce 4 Ti 4400.

I thought maybe it was my old TNT drivers hanging around in my system causing the problem, but after installing a fresh copy of Windows XP it STILL won't load the drivers. I too get a black screen (monitor LED blinks to indicate no video signal) at the point where Windows logon screen would be displayed.

The card runs fine in default VGA mode but as soon as I try to load GeForce 4 drivers and reboot, I get the black screen.

I really don't think it can be my monitor because this monitor can handle at least 90Hz and in any case after installing the drivers I didn't make any changes to default frequency before rebooting, so why would it start Windows in higher than 90Hz for the default frequency? That doesn't make sense.

I called LeadTek tech support and the guy pretty much said to try everything I have already tried. Now he is saying maybe the card is bad but I really don't believe that... I mean, the card works fine in VGA mode so it is obviously working. I think it is maybe a conflict of some sort but with what? *sigh*

I'm going to try removing my LAN card and Promise 66 HD controller - those are my only two PCI cards, and see what happens.

[BipolarBill]

I have never been able to get any MX card to work in any Soyo slot 1 mainboard. I have had at least 6 Soyo BX boards too...only 2 are still living. I find that the TNT2 Pro and M64 work fine in them. As a matter of fact, the GEForce 2 Ti (about $90) works great in them too. I can't figure out the MX problem. Most times, the Soyos won't even POST with them in there. :( I would swap for the GeForce2 Ti.

[$1500-P4 gamer]

Wow! BipolarBill thats a bummer. Whats there prob? It sounds like a bios prob, or maybe a chipset driver issue due to the video going away when entering windows. Main Hardware support is there if it is running in vga mode. Anyhow does this brand of vid card use the Nvidia drivers? Check the manufacturer's web site first. Not all Nvidia video cards use the reference drivers. Thats why I like VisionTek all refrence drivers. But I know Creative and some others make their own tweaked drivers and sometimes the nvidia reference ones wont work. Its a thought anyways!:)

[BipolarBill]

Thanks gamer, but that is the distant past now. I tried all sorts of drivers. As I said, the PC would rarely even POST. When it did, I got the same trouble as malkaven. I cut my losses with a nice Matrox G450. :)

[Xyllian]

IT'S WORKING, IT'S WOOOOOOOOORKING!!! MUAHAHHAHAAAAA!

I removed both my PCI cards: Linksys 10/100 Ethernet card and Promise 66 HD controller (which was just running my ZIP drive which i hardly ever use).

With both cards out of the system, I uninstalled the GeForce Drivers, rebooted, reinstalled, rebooted, and VOILA!!! My Ti 4400 works!

I ran some tests in 3DMark 2001 to make sure it was stable, which it was, then I reinstalled the LAN card in a different PCI slot than I had it in before... rebooted, held my breath and... it still works!

Maybe it was the order the PCI cards were in and had a conflict? Maybe it just didn't like the old Promise 66 card? I'll try adding the Promise card back to the mix and see what happens.

Oh, and I went ahead and overclocked my mobo back up to where I usually have it: 146mhz running an Athlon XP 1800+ at 1678mhz (up from 1533mhz core)

3DMark 2001 SE score with LeadTek Ti 4400, factory defaults: 9915

3DMark 2001 SE score with LeadTek Ti 4400,
Vid card OC'd to 300mhz core, 600mhz memory: 10200
Vid card OC'd as above + FSB to 147mhz and CPU to 1679mhz: 10,889

WOOOT!!!!

Malkaven, check your PCI cards bro, try removing them all and reinstalling one-by-one... I hope this works for you too. Good luck!

[BipolarBill]

Kewl!

[Highlander20s]

i have the same problem but my card was an on board card i changed the jumper settings changed the bios settings removed the card put in new nvidia card and nothing no matter what the card will not work so if you do get it working can you tell me how

[Kurylo]

It may be defected memory on your GPU...

[malkaven]

ok im going to try to replace the mother board. would this motherboard be a good change?
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=6VTA2

its a chaintek. Trying to keep things cheap dont have much money for comp upgrades atm.

[BipolarBill]

I'm not a big fan of VIA chipsets, but it should be OK. We're here for tuning advice!

[deadkenny]

Slot 1 boards are old enough that you should be able to get something better without having to pay too much. I would prefer something based on the Intel BX chipset, like the ASUS P3B-F for example.

[BipolarBill]

Agreed. Intel BX chipsets are the best slot 1 solutions - except (ironically enough) Intel's own Seattle board.