Urgent Need help! Graphics

I'm having a bit of a problem with my graphics card. I've just bought a new 200Gig IBM hard drive, and just installed Windows XP on it. When I installed the drivers for my Ati 9600XT the graphics go disjointed and it is mainly in the games that I can see the textures go wrong,It happens in all the games I try. When I plug my 80Gig harrd drive in the graphics are fine again. One thing in Windows that has'nt gone right is the cursor fr the text is in a box with lines going across. I've formatted the hard drive in NTFS again and the same thing happens again. I have install the lastest drivers and it makes no difference.

 

someone must know

 

which drivers did you install? have you tried newer/older drivers?

 

Shot in the dark here..
Do you have DX9 installed?

 

i have tried the latest cat drivers from ati and i have rolled back the driver. installed drivers of the the install disc nothing seems to work. i even installed the same driver that is on my 80g h\drive and still nothing . i have done the updates of microsoft and th direct9b is installed.

 

there should be nothing wrong with the actual card as the card works well when i use my 80g h\drive

 

What's the power rating on the power supply?

 

it is a Q-TEC 550W

 

i wonder if the h/drive could be causing the problem. it is a hitachi deskstar 200g but on install it shows that i have only 132gb. my m/board is msi kt3 ultra {ms-6380e}. why is it when i hook my 80g h/drive up there is no problem . i then hook the 200g up ON ITS OWN and there is aproblem. IS THE HARDRIVE THE PROBLEM !!!!!!!!

 

Are the drivers different in the smaller hard drive then in the 200 gig'er?

 

Along with checking the BIOS, do you have Windows SP-1 installed, either manually or does your version include it? Large drive support is included with SP-1, and some of the ATI vid drivers need SP-1 installed to work right.

 

I know about the SP1 with large HDD (48-bit LBA), but I'm curious about ATI drivers with SP1. Why do the drivers require SP1?

 

I don't know, but Note #1 on their driver download page says "ATI recommends Windows XP Service Pack 1 or higher to be installed." and I've seen the same on the readme files included with the drivers. One of the "benefits" listed for SP-1 is " compatibility with newer software and drivers", so I assume the newer ATI drivers depend somewhat on newer features/fixes in SP-1.

 

hi i am back after alot of testing and this is what has come up:
1: i have the same drivers on both h/drives
2: i have sp1 installed on both
3: also have all the latest win xp updates
4: have the latest m/board +graphics updates
5:m/board is MSI KT3 ULTRA [MS-6380E]

now when i go into the bios for the 200g and check the settings it just has the 200g listed but
nothing stated about the cycles , heads, or sectors they are blank.
if the 80g is on its own i get a listing for the number of cycles+sectors+heads.

i put the graphics card in a new putor with a new m/board and the ati card is fine . i then place the 200g in the same putor with the ati card and it is fine no problems. the putor it is testing in does not have all the latest updates except for the ati drivers and stiil no problems .


so it seems that my m/board some how does not support 200g hard drive so i have put my 80g back in and set up the 200g as a slave to it. with the h/drive setup this way there is no clashes of yet and all is running fine now. BUT i am not happy as i was going to give the 80g to the kids computer and now i cannt.
I HAVE BEEN ON THE MSI SITE AND CANNT FIND ANY INFO ON THE SITE TO FIX THIS PROBLEM

THANKS GUYS{so it seems that i will have to upgrade the whole computer. but i wanted to wait for all the new hardware to come out first before i was going to upgrade]

 

ok here goes i found the problem. when i install the graphics card with only the 200g the graghics installed smartgard and enabled this on its own. strange hey because when i turn smartgard off and reboot the graphics are 100%!!!

however if i check the bios the 200g is there but there is no info on it eg. number of cycles+sectors+heads

i have placed the 200g as device 0 [ master] with it in the middle of the ide cable and i have also placed it at the end of the cable. still same results but i am happy that the graphics are sorted out

also can i reformat a h/drive if it is a slave without having to put the window disc in.

 

It sounds like S.M.A.R.T will get enabled when you "install a new hard drive with smart compatibility". But smart will think there is an error with the drive if the drive has been low-level formatted, which it is from the factory, so you'll wanna keep it off until you've got windows installed properly.

 

goldfish i want to keep the 200g on my system and give the 80g to the kids so if the 200g has been low formated form the factory. how do i sort the low format

 

it is not the SMART feature in the bios that is the problem but the SMARTGARD{tm] feature in the ati control pannel. if i turn this off all is well as for run diagnostics i have run them all and all is up to date

 

SmartGart is for changing your AGP settings on the fly, 2x, 4x, 8x, etc.

It also shows what your current AGP settings are.

With that said, I have read all sorts of people having trouble with it.

I've had no issues myself. Others simply disabled it.

 

Oh right, my bad

 

SmartGart crashes two of my games - turned it off and never looked back.
You might loook for an updated BIOS for your vid card, my 9600SE needed a reflash to run Anarchy Online reliably.