PNY Geforce 4200 help please

[jerishian]

I recently bought this card, and from the looks of it, I don't know jack about getting it to work. Every game that I load up will freeze. Here are my specs:

Asus A7v266 motherboard w/ athlon xp 1600
384mb ddr ram
Sounblaster live 5.1
PNY GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128mb
120 gig maxtor 7200 rpm
Windows Xp
I have updated all my drivers except for my motherboard bios, but I am a little unsure on how to do that in Xp. Thanks

[Imperion1]

What was your previous video card? Did you uninstall the previous vid card drivers before removing that card and installing the PNY?

[jerishian]

Sorry, yes I did. I even did a clean format on the hard drive and reinstalled everything. My old card was a ASUS GeforceMX 440 64 mb card.

[Imperion1]

Since this is a fresh install of Windows, did you install the Via drivers for the mobo?
As for updating the mobo bios, you do this using a boot floppy to A:\ prompt, not within windows.

[jerishian]

I just updated the Via drivers and stil no change. Call me stupid but I am not really sure how to create a boot floppy within windows xp and get it to start before windows. I saved the award.exe from the asus site onto a disk and reset my bios settings to read the floppy first, but everytime that I restart with this floppy in the drive I get that not a system disk, please take out and restart message. Thank you for the suggestions so far, and the patience to help me out!

[Imperion1]

A Win98 bootdisk will work also. Any boot disk that will get you to the A:\ prompt will work. It doesn't need to be created by XP.

www.bootdisk.com
Dr Dos7 will work. Just install the exe onto a floppy disk.
As for the bios, you need to extract that single file onto a floppy disk also.

[zybch]

To make a boot disk under XP:

Open windows explorer
Right click on the floppy drive
Select Format
Tick the "Create an MS-DOS Start up Disc" box
Click on the 'start' button

While a bios flash can be performed with a 98 boot disk, an XP one can be useful for other stuff as it lets you use NTFS partitions while the 98 boot disk can't see them.

[Imperion1]

You don't need to access the hard drive to update the mobo bios. So it doesn't matter what OS is installed. Accessing the hard drive has nothing to do with flashing the bios.

[jerishian]

Very cool information. Thanks. I flashed the bios and it still didn't help. I guess I will try the guys at PNY thanks for all the help, I guess I am missing something, becuase it doesn't seem like a faulty card.

[causticVapor]

What temp is the card running at? Mine had an interface problem as well and would lock up until I put more goop in there.

[SantiClaws]

I had the exact same problem with my PNY 4200 card when I first bought it--lockups, crashes, etc. I went and exchanged the card--no more problems! :D So it is possible that the card is bad. Since you just bought it, can you exchange it? At least that'll eliminate the possibility of the card being the problem if nothing else.

[jerishian]

think i will try that too. Thanks again for the advice

[$1500-P4 gamer]

The rumor is that PNY ti4200 and etc. run hotter than their other counterparts. Maybe due to the interface prob that cV had but its there. Lots of people complaining about how hot it is etc. compaired to others and that limits there oclocks. I know your not trying that but in this case it maybe so bad its not even allowing it to perform at stock speed. Id send it back at this point. No video card should be that hard to install and if it is then your facing that prob. all the time with reinstalls or games not working. Ditch it while you can and get another the same.:)

[jerishian]

I returned the card and got a new one works fine now, thanks again for the help guys!