My computer is in bad shape

[Handruin]

I'm not even going to begin explaining to everyone why I am writing this post with my work notebook...

Lets just say I tried upgrading to the latest ATI drivers and now my registry is in the shitter and XP no longer boots with the message NTLRD missing.

Let me warn that if anyone does try and the utility I listed above named "Radeonator", absolutly do not use the option to clean up ATI driver installs from the registry. It really does one hell of a job removing the registry.

:frusty:

Many unpleasant words want to be expressed right now. Forum backups are in three locations other then the corrupted drive right now, so I'm fairly confident none will be touched.

It's 12:12 AM and I think I'm going for a walk outside for a few minutes... :blue:

 

[Pradeep]

Ouch I had a similar problem when i went to upgrade from the drivers on the Radeon 7500 AIW CD to the latest offical ones on the ATI website. foobared my win2k install, it would get to the desktop and the screen would go a deep transparent red. Had to install another win2k parition, i've got about 3 or 4 in multi boot on this machine now. I'm very hesitant to play with ATI drivers for this reason. I might try again, I'll uninstall the current drivers, reboot, then run Regcleaner to strip out all the ATIxxx stuff out, reboot then install the new drivers. Fingers crossed I'm going in!

 

[Pradeep]

If you do a new install in a seperate parition Doug, you should be able to boot into it and access your other data.

 

[CougTek]

Wow, I never realized upgrading the latest ATI Radeon driver could be so problematic for some people. I don't know what to tell you, it's hard to figure a solution to a problem I never had. I never had to mess in the registry in order to install any ATI Radeon driver, maybe this is where you do something wrong (wild guess).

Doug, no matter how frustrated you feel about your computer, please don't do like the Gateway customer who tried to fix it with a sledgehammer : we still need it to compute the Genome ;-)

 

[Handruin]

Well, I had to reinstall XP 3 times and now I'm a little closer to solving some problems. I'm using my machine now, and I didn't lose much, if anything because I installed XP into a new folder and renamed "Documents and settings" so that it didn't overwrite anything in my profiles.

I believe I have a resource conflict going on somewhere. For starters, a clean install of XP freezes upon boot exactly the same as when I updated my ATI drivers. Except this time I had not loaded any drivers, they are all the default installed XP drivers. I've never had this happen on my machine with a clean install of XP.

So I'm guessing there is a resource conflict, perhaps with my video card. This could also be the reason why my video performance is so bad.

Right now I am running my machine with most of the items in my BIOS disabled. This has fixed the immediate problem, but now comes the annoying part to enable them one by one until it freezes up again.

The registry issue was my own fault...well, it was that utilities fault, but I should have backed up the registry before using it. It's annoying that it removed all of the "Current Control set" section and this crippled my machine.

I will not be taking a sledgehammer to my box like the gateway guy. I accept the fact that I built a crappy machine, and not gateway.

 

[Handruin]

I guess I spoke too soon. My machine continues to freeze up and will no longer make it into windows. I've been trying safe mode but it keeps freezing on one file named Mup.sys.

Anyone know the correct BIOS settings for a MSI K7T Pro 2A mother board? :-?

 

[Mercutio]

Well, "Load BIOS Defaults" is always a good guess.
Your board is probably new enough that you can't toggle ACPI off, but if you can, do it.

Load XP with just your video card install. Pull your sound and NIC for now, disable USB and onboard RAID, if you have those.

See if that works.

 

[Tannin]

If it's anything like the Pro 2, sell it and buy something less fussy about RAM, like an Epox or a Soltek. I don't know about the Pro 2A, but Skallas says that the performance defaults on the Pro 2 are buggy and that other KT266A boards go faster anyway. I know I've got 512MB of RAM in my system again for the first time since I put the Pro 2 into it some months ago. The secret to my eventual success? An Epox board and some no-name DDR. With more than one stick, the MSI wouldn't even work with Legend or Crucial, let alone anything else.

From now on, I'm keeping MSI products where they belong: in the AGP slot with a monitor attached to them.

 

[Mercutio]

Where is Skallas these days?

 

[CougTek]

Where is Skallas these days?

I'm pretty sure he is still in Estonia ;-)


Doug,

Since it can be related to ressource sharing, do you set your BIOS to let the OS take care of the ressource assigment or do you ask the BIOS to set them - ie, Do you set "Plug n'pray OS installed" to yes or no?

 

[Handruin]

I've been trying all sorts of troubleshooting and the only solution so far is to run in VGA mode. The machine is very stable, but non-functional.

I've spent some time over at MSI reading in their forums. All I can say is holy crap! I didn't know so many people had problems with this board:

http://cweb.msi.com.tw/eforum/index.php?target=article&tid=2305&page=1

If the only item I were to change is my current mother board, what brand should I go with for a new one? I'll spend up to $150 USD if it gives me a more stable machine. Are Epox good boards? I don't know much about Soltek...are they relaible? I would need a board that works with my configuration listed below if possible, I don't want to end up building a new machine for this...

I've tried to remove all components of my machine except video and SCSI. (I need SCSI to boot) Nothing seems to help. I've tried turning off the setting which ask "PnP enable OS", but that doesn't help. There is another setting in the power managment which cause the machine to hang if I disable it but I can't remember what it is called. (I'll post it after I reboot)

My Video is in the AGP slot, and my SCSI card is in the 2nd PCI, skipping the PCI slot next to the AGP. (I admit it was originally in the first PCI for over a year without problems...my bad) I only moved the SCSi card today so this is not the rott of my problems. These problems began before I moved or touched any hardware.

I think I might split this thred into a new one because I'm off topic in the Gfoce post.

Here is my current configuration:

MSI K7T Pro2a 1.2 GHz Athlon
Crucial 768MB PC-133 CL2 (3 x 256MB)
Chenming 901a Case with 300 Watt Sparkle PS
Radeon 64DDR
Tekram DC-390U3W
Atlas 10KIII 18
Atlas 10KII 9.1
Barracuda 18XL
WD 18 GB Expert
Plextor 40X
Sony 12x10x32
SB Live 5.1
Linksys 10/100
CyberPower 1250AVR
iiyama VM Pro 450 19”

 

[Handruin]

OK! Another update.

First off the power managment option that caused my machine to hang when disabled is called IPCA. I checked it twice and that isthe lettering. (Not ACPI)

I had update my BIOS to the latest version about a month ago for this motherboard because I thought it would help performance a little. To my amazment, I believe it is the root of my current problem.

I downloaded an earlier revision of the bios (roughly 4 revisions) and installed just now. My machine is now working correctly as far as I can tell. I have the latest ATI drivers that Coug listed, and I didn't lock up, so that is a good sign!

This is a very annoying situation, but if the earlier BIOS keeps my machine running without crashing, I will leave it like this.

I'm going format and reinstall XP again because of all of this crap going on with my machine. I want a clean install with all the hardware installed and in the correct PCI slots. Hopefully when the machine is finished I should be back and running fine.

Thanks for letting me rant.

 

[Bozo]

Just curious; does your motherboard have a VIA chipset?

Bozo

 

[Mercutio]

Epox has a really nice KT266A board, and I have nothing but good things to say about Gigabyte's higher-end KT333. I finally got around to using a Soltek KT266A board last month, but it left my possession almost as soon as I got it. Trouble-free and a decent connector layout (not as sensible as the Gigabyte, however), but nothing so compelling as to put it at the forefront of my list of preferred hardware.

 

[CougTek]

Just curious; does your motherboard have a VIA chipset?

Bozo

Yes, the K7T Pro2A uses the KT133A chipset, but that's not the cause of the problem. Actually, the K7T Pro2A wasn't a bad motherboard at all. Anandech ran a few servers on it. The KT266A from MSI is a POS however, but not their KT133A.

BTW Doug, using 3 unbuffered sticks of RAM is nothing to improve the stability of your setup. Either use just two or buy Registered RAM.

 

[Bozo]

The reason I ask was I was at the VIA Forum looking for help with a Tyan board with a VIA chipset. Lots of tales of woe over there. Also some helpful advice.

Bozo

 

[Pradeep]

Well successfully running the new ATI drivers, after uninstalling the previous ones. But my MMC functionality such as TV etc isn't there (all ! in Device Manager). So I'm waiting on the 15MB of MMC 7.6 to download. I also notice there is a new version of the ATI DVD player ver 7.6 out as well.

http://www.atitech.com/support/products/pc/radeon7500/win2k/aiwradeon7500win2kdrivers.html

 

[CougTek]

I also notice there is a new version of the ATI DVD player ver 7.6 out as well.

http://www.atitech.com/support/products/pc/radeon7500/win2k/aiwradeon7500win2kdrivers.html

Do you think you'll have to download it often? -> Do you want me to link it in the download section?

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Damn ATI... and then Mercutio says nVIDIA is bad... :-?
At least nVIDIA's drivers have better 3rd-party fixing tools...

 

[Mercutio]

Didn't Doug say that he didn't start having major problems until he tried using a 3rd party tool to clean his registry?

The whole concept of "third party" is "not the people who are directly involved in whatever".

Or to put it another way, perhaps Doug should not have been surprised at the problems he had, given that he isn't using ATI's tools.

One of the major knocks against ATI not too long ago was infrequent driver updates. Nowadays, though, there are new ATI drivers about every month, and new nvidia releases about every three months. ATIs mostly just keep getting better (I don't know exactly what happened to Doug. Is a bad BIOS still a suspect?), but I look on gaming sites and see that people are still using year-old nvidia drivers because newer ones cause problems with program X. That's progress?

I know Tannin isn't exactly a neutral party, either, but ask him his opinion of nvidia-based cards vs. ATI. Then ask CougTek and Buck. The builder perspective is different from the hobbyist, but a lot more hardware passes through our hands than the video card of the month-type hobbyists. Our values are different too, I suppose, but since the choices we make impact more than just our personal machines, there is no doubt value in our opinion.

After the problems I've had with nvidia cards - and this is the most fair statement I can make - I would prefer to deal with any other brand of card. Even Trident or SiS. Since ATI has emerged as a competitive 2D/3D solution, that's going to be my high-end card of choice. They just haven't given me any problems or reasons to not consider their products.

 

[Buck]

There always seems to be this underlying battle between an nVidia card and a VIA chipset. If you get the mix right, stick with it, if you don't get the mix right switch to ATI or Matrox.

BR

 

[Tannin]

You are dead right about perspectives, Mercutio. I care far more about the return rate and the niggle rate than any other factor, no matter if I'm talking about video cards or main board chipsets.

(A thread to which I must return - I've let myself become obsessed with adding more and more old motherboards to my web page. It must be a sort of second childhood thing, I think. These last few weeks I have become totally uninterested in Althon XPs and X15s, and instead am spending all the hours in the day doing things like looking up the manufacturer of a 1990 I/O chipset, and cleaning the corrosion off a 286 mainboard so that I can photograph it, and wondering what the best way is to make a recording of the sound an ST-251 makes, and running my collection of 486 mainboards with suspected fake cache through a RAM tester to see if it's really fake or not.)

(All of which explains why Tea and I have been so quiet these last few days. Not to mention short of sleep.)

Err ... yes .. video. Actually, I used to despise Nvidia cards, beause back in Socket 7 days they were terrible. Now we are selling maybe 70% Nvidia and have very little trouble. But we never use the latest drivers. And my attitude to ATI 3D cards is .... I only ever sold one, a Rage Fury, I think, they were new, and that was maybe two or three years ago. It didn't come back, but the guy who bought it was very competent, so it would have had to have been impossible to make it work before SCott brought it back.

The main reason I've not sold any other ATI cards (bar some 4MB 2D things that had some driver weirdness but worked fine - Expert @ Work or some such?) is because of all the horror stories I used to hear on Storage Review.

 

[Handruin]

Didn't Doug say that he didn't start having major problems until he tried using a 3rd party tool to clean his registry?

The whole concept of "third party" is "not the people who are directly involved in whatever".

Or to put it another way, perhaps Doug should not have been surprised at the problems he had, given that he isn't using ATI's tools.

One of the major knocks against ATI not too long ago was infrequent driver updates. Nowadays, though, there are new ATI drivers about every month, and new nvidia releases about every three months. ATIs mostly just keep getting better (I don't know exactly what happened to Doug. Is a bad BIOS still a suspect?), but I look on gaming sites and see that people are still using year-old nvidia drivers because newer ones cause problems with program X. That's progress?

I know Tannin isn't exactly a neutral party, either, but ask him his opinion of nvidia-based cards vs. ATI. Then ask CougTek and Buck. The builder perspective is different from the hobbyist, but a lot more hardware passes through our hands than the video card of the month-type hobbyists. Our values are different too, I suppose, but since the choices we make impact more than just our personal machines, there is no doubt value in our opinion.

After the problems I've had with nvidia cards - and this is the most fair statement I can make - I would prefer to deal with any other brand of card. Even Trident or SiS. Since ATI has emerged as a competitive 2D/3D solution, that's going to be my high-end card of choice. They just haven't given me any problems or reasons to not consider their products.

There was 3 issues going on in my situation, but ultimitaly the death of my machine was related to a 3rd party tool.

The first issue was that I updated my BIOS almost a month ago and I had not touched any of my video drivers until a few days ago. The update introduced some type of conflict that wouldn't allow the new ATI drivers to work with my machine. Everytime I rebooted, the machine would freeze up or blue screen.

The second issue was that I installed the new drivers cougtek posted, and in the process I used the 3rd party tool to clean the registry of the old driver data. What I didn't know was that it removed the entire sub tree of CurrentControlSet. This is what killed me machine.

The last problem has to do with my refresh rates and also how the picture is never centered on my monitor. This is the reason why I need this 3rd party tool. My ATI 64DDR will only center the picture when it runs at 85Hz refresh in all resolutions. I have no problems with the default drivers running at less then 85Hz, but all the new drivers have this issue. In the past I used the same monitor with my Asus 3400 TNT video card and never had this issue...

Right now I'm back up and running wth a clean install of XP Pro and the latest drivers Coug posted. I've installed Counter-Strike and my frame rates in OpenGL have improved greatly. I'm now running arounf 70-80 FPs at 1024x768 @32bpp where is was 15-20ish at 800x600 @16bpp.

 

[CougTek]

Do you still have the off-centered image problem now after the clean WinXP install (clean WinXP???) and new drivers installed?

 

[Handruin]

Do you still have the off-centered image problem now after the clean WinXP install (clean WinXP???) and new drivers installed?

Yes, so I installed the 3rd party utility again and it fixed it. I will not use the registry cleaning part of it this time.

 

[Mercutio]

This is one of those "is it plugged in right?" questions:
Does your display look acceptable without the 3rd party tool at either 75Hz, if you can stand it, or a refresh higher than 85Hz?

I've found that when there's a sync problem with a display like that, often fiddling with the refresh rates can lead to something that's at least acceptable.

You might also want to look for a monitor information file for your current display, rather than just using the Plug and Play monitor setting, which is certainly not perfect.

 

[Mercutio]

Tannin, the question is, are you selling 70% nvidia cards out of some confidence in the product, because of market or competitive demands, or because of cost concerns?

 

[Pradeep]

I also notice there is a new version of the ATI DVD player ver 7.6 out as well.

http://www.atitech.com/support/products/pc/radeon7500/win2k/aiwradeon7500win2kdrivers.html

Do you think you'll have to download it often? -> Do you want me to link it in the download section?

Given that I'm on dial up, dl'ing it once will be quite enough thanks I installed MMC 7.6, still no luck getting any AIW functionality to work (this is after uninstalling MMC 7.5). Still ! in the Device Manager with Code 31. I think I have learnt another annoying lesson. When you upgrade ATI drivers, you need to uninstall not only the previous drivers but the previous MMC as well :x *sighs* Well at least it hasn't killed my win2k install, touch wood. Now to get the DVD upgrade.

 

[Handruin]

This is one of those "is it plugged in right?" questions:
Does your display look acceptable without the 3rd party tool at either 75Hz, if you can stand it, or a refresh higher than 85Hz?

I've found that when there's a sync problem with a display like that, often fiddling with the refresh rates can lead to something that's at least acceptable.

You might also want to look for a monitor information file for your current display, rather than just using the Plug and Play monitor setting, which is certainly not perfect.

My display looks fine at 75Hz when I'm in 2D, but when it kicks over to 3D, it's a different story.

I've tried 3 different montitor".inf" files. I've used the one that comes with XP for my exact monitor, the one from IIyama and the default monitor file. I've found no difference with any of these.

When I enable "Use DDC info" in the ATI "Display" tab, it will only allow a refresh as high as 75Hz. Therefore I do not use it so that I can have 85 Hz refresh.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Isn't the G4 MX the best performance/price solution currently available?

 

[Pradeep]

The GF 4 MX is a slug. It's not a proper DirectX 8.1 GPU. A decent GF3 performs better in most cases.

 

[Mercutio]

I'd guess you'll do better for your money with a Radeon 7x00 of some form. The lowest-priced versions come in at around $35 (32MB SDR) and easily manage better 2D than any GF2 I've seen and VERY fast 3D as well.

Doug, are you sure that the 85Hz you set in your tool is "really" 85Hz? Can you set anything higher?

 

[Handruin]

I'd guess you'll do better for your money with a Radeon 7x00 of some form. The lowest-priced versions come in at around $35 (32MB SDR) and easily manage better 2D than any GF2 I've seen and VERY fast 3D as well.

Doug, are you sure that the 85Hz you set in your tool is "really" 85Hz? Can you set anything higher?

I can verify through the controls on my monitor that it is 85 Hz. The IIyama has a frequency section that i can open at any time and it shows me the resolution, Horizontal and Vertical refresh.

I am able to go above 85 for anything under 1600x1200 resolution. I can set 800x600 to 120 Hz refresh I think, then 1024x768 to 100 Hz, and so on.

 

[CougTek]

I'd guess you'll do better for your money with a Radeon 7x00 of some form. The lowest-priced versions come in at around $35 (32MB SDR) and easily manage better 2D than any GF2 I've seen and VERY fast 3D as well.

You are talking about the Radeon 7000 (sometimes called Radeon VE). Among ATI's lineup, it's the card with the worst 2D quality. Its RAMDAC is 300MHz instead of 350MHz and the filtering circuit isn't as elaborate as on the other Radeon, resulting in 2D quality better than the pre-Titanium GeFarce, but lower than the Geforce since the arrival of the Titanium lineup.

It's not a bad card (still has more features than a generic GF2MX) for budget box with a 17" monitor or a 19" running at 1024x768. However, I wouldn't use it for an office computer in front of which people will spend many hours a day. Matrox Millenium G400/450/550 are more appropriate for this environment.

Personally, I would scratch the VERY in your last sentence, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Sol]

The GF 4 MX is a slug. It's not a proper DirectX 8.1 GPU. A decent GF3 performs better in most cases.

I believe the GForce3 performs better in all cases. The G4MX is actually based on the NV17 chip which was used in one of Nvidias Quadro series cards( Quadro2 Pro I think, released about August last year). It has some of the pixel shaders which make the G3 and G4 cards (And ATIs Radeons for that matter) able to produce some of thier more atractive graphics but not many.
Calling them a G4 of any flavour is completly false as they are in reality a pre GeForce3 product in most respects.(The alteration of a single resistor will in fact make the G4MX report itself as its quadro equivilent).
In some testing I did the G4MX performance was about the same as a Gforce2TI card, which costs about the same, but it should have better performance with antialiasing and antisotropic filtering and the like as well as better perfomance in the next generation of games using DirectX 8 which it does impliment a little bit of, though as Pradeep points out not properly.

 

[Mercutio]

You are talking about the Radeon 7000 (sometimes called Radeon VE). Among ATI's lineup, it's the card with the worst 2D quality...

It's not a bad card (still has more features than a generic GF2MX) for budget box with a 17" monitor or a 19" running at 1024x768...

Personally, I would scratch the VERY in your last sentence, but that's just my opinion.

Well, I've been buying 7500s, mostly. Maybe that's why I wasn't clear. A couple of 7000s and a couple of 7200s, but mostly 7500s. Looking at a 2D display side-by-side, I can't tell a difference between a 7000 and a 7500 @ 1024x768 on a 17" display. Matrox is still the tops as far as 2D, though, something that's particularly obvious when I display a screen full of text.

90-something fps in Quake3 isn't fast?

 

[CougTek]

90-something fps in Quake3 isn't fast?

The only definition in which a Radeon 7000 (which is, I repeat, none other than a Radeon VE) can reach 90FPS in Quake III is at 640x480. I admit the review at Anandtech is dating a bit, but ATI hasn't produced drivers able to double the frame rates at 800x600 or above since then for that card. At 800x600, with the 7.68 driver, I doubt you'll be able to get anything above 50-60FPS. That isn't VERY fast in my book. Don't forget that this is the average frame rate, but the most important value isn't the average but the minimum frame rate because that's the limiting factor that can make a game unplayable.

As I wrote, good card for budget box, but nothing higher. That's just IMO though, you can use it where you want.

Regarding the question of PeeWee (;-)), it depends which flavor of the GeForce 4MX. If you read this recent sub-200$ graphic cards review at Anandtech, you'll see that the GF4MX 400 is far from being a speed demon compared to all the others. With the latest driver installed, the ATI Radeon 7500 took quite a speed bump and it can now compete against the 440 model in most games. Since it's cheaper (at least here) than the GF4MX 440, but includes more features (DVI/TV-out outputs, hardware MPEG-2 acceleration, slightly better 2D output), I think it is THE best bang for the buck right now. I can get an OEM Radeon 7500 for 139$CDN in Montréal, but the cheapest GF4MX 440 is no less than 170$. I don't think a GF4MX worths 22% more than a Radeon 7500. Others might think differently.