graphic card problem

mate of mine is having trouble with a new graphic card he installed tonight, hes to scared to come on here n post so im doing it for him.

he use to have a geforce 6800le AGP, which he has replaced tongiht with a geforce 7600gs AGP due to the fact his other card wasnt supported for a game...

his set up...
processor: AMD athlon(tm) 64 x2 dual core processer 3800+, mmx, 3dnow (2cpu).
1GB ram (DD2 800)
geforce 7600gs 256mb AGP
motherboard: asrock am2nf3-vsta
operating system: XP

his problem is now when he goes to play a game it crashes...genrally all games crash on the menu screen or loading screen....he said sometimes it crashes and reboots its self...or he has to manually restart the computer....

instanly we both thought of drivers, but hes updated the nvidia drivers with the latest one.....so open to any other sugestions lol thanks

 

Reinstall the games.I have trackmania and yesterday it crash on loading screen.I reinstall the game andd now everything is fine.

 

nope he reinstalled a game, and he said he got a little further then the menu screen but it crashed again

 

this is a driver problem.uninstall the new driver and install the original that come with the graphic card.

 

i belive he had the same problem with the origional driver...which is why i sugested to him to install the latest one

 

Tell me something,if you go to device manager,the display driver work propely,right?

 

yes it says this device is working propperly

 

Check the resolution and refresh rate,maybe it's too high.Is this LCD or CRT monitor?
If it's CRT 17" set to 1024x768 and rehresh to 70 HZ

 

he has a CRT monitor....but he wont have changed any of the settins from his previous card...unless the card has changed them....what should he have his settings on?

 

Could someone please help here?

 

It's been my experience that video card problems (as long as the card itself is not defective) can in most cases be narrowed down to a few things. Drivers, heat, or power are the primary culprits.

Sounds like you have addressed the driver issue, and it doesn't sound like a heat problem to me (it could be. If the card came with a fan, is it working properly? Is the heatsink on the GPU seated properly? Case fans working Ok?).

What kind and wattage power supply does he have? The data I was able to find suggests a 400W for that card.

He might try turning off fast-writes. I've been told that helps eliminate some game crashes. That, and turning down all the game settings to their lowest point can sometimes help in troubleshooting game issues in the absence of any obvious hardware problems.

Not much help, I know.

 

he has a 400w power supply, as far as im aware everything is running fine on the card, ie fan....if it wasnt then it wud say....n to be honest its not a major jump from a geforce 6800 to a gefroce 7600, its not like hes running sli, or 2 of the cards as i am. im still convinced theres a motherbord/graphic driver issue, due to the fact wen he removes the motherbord driver, he can play any game, but on lowest settings, which he shudnt have to have them on that, as a 7600 is vastly superior to a 6800, and its only when he places the needed motherbord driver back on does the problem begin

 

hi mate, did you uninstall the previous card and clean out all the old drivers before installing the new card....if not i suggest going to control panel and uninstalling the nvidia drivers..do not reboot but then run a driver cleaner...search around easy to find they maybe in the download section here if not go over to guru3d...reboot go to device manager and uninstall the graphics card...reboot and when the new card is recognised install the latest set of drivers available...also make sure you install the latest chipset drivers available.

also turn off automatic restarts then if it crashes you should get a blue screen with possible clues to the error...or at least dump files which can be analysed

also is there anything showing in eventviewer which may provide a clue to the errors?

 

Might be worth checking that the graphics card is not on the same power line as the hard drive, might be dragging it down?

Same goes for fans etc try to keep them on a seperate supply, does sound like a software glitch rather than hardware but also worth checking that the case temps havent shot up due to the new card temp output.

Maybe none of what I have said but you never know....

 

General_Lee_Stoned....yes he removed the previous nvidia drivers, as there are different drivers for a series 6, to a series 7....but nvidia automatically removes any old previous drivers anyway, so confliction with nvidia drivers shudnt be a problem, if his previous card was an ATI then tht wud most likly be his problem...

as for the blue screen option....it goes too quick to see anything...so where is the eventviewer?...

mud shot....the card is not on the same power line as the Harddrive...and the temp is normal...in the green acording to the nivida driver....

coudl someone check the compatability with the geforce 7600gs and the motherboard asrock am2nf3-vsta.... because wen he removes the motherbord driver, he can play the games on the lowest settings when he shouldnt have to, but when he adds the needed motherboard driver, thats when the problem becomes more major
thanks for the help so far guys

 

hi m8 youd be surprised just how much crap gets left behind after uninstalling drivers....
anyway you cant see the blue screen as the pc has auto restart on crash error checked

Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
Click the Advanced tab.
Under Startup and Recovery, click Settings to open the Startup and Recovery dialog box.
Clear the Automatically restart check box, and click OK the necessary number of times.
Restart your computer for the settings to take effect.
Now when you go to shut down and a fatal error occurs, you'll at least see it and it won't cause an automatic reboot.



get to eventviewer
Start menu.
Run Command
Type in
eventvwr.msc
ok

have a look for warnings events etc at the time of the crashes, could give the clue we need


also have you got another monitor to try, old crt monitors do fail espicially if it cant handle the graphics the new card is throwing out

 

right i will get him to compile some error reports n i will report back wen he has done so, thanks for the help, feel we mite be gettin somewere now

 

lets hope so man...ill keep my eyes out for any updates

 

okay, i wont get em till wednesday, im gonna go round n take a look for me self, so i will report back then

 

this is gonna sound so stupid lol but from the error blue screen he got he said it said summet to do with nv4disp and the error said something about an "Infinity loop"

also he has a "gart" driver for the motherbord, n when he installs it thts when he cant do anything on games, but when he dosnt install it the problem is there but happens when the game increases performance demands, which with a 7600 halo combat evolved shouldnt crash lol

 

hi mate..well we all know the nv4disp is a driver error but if your using the latest set it seems rather strange

have you tried using an older version of the gart driver
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_archive.html

those nforce boards can be a right pain to set up

what are the bios settings..did you turn off the fast writes as posted earlier in the thread

 

its hard for me to get him to do anything like tht, i cud do it tomorrow..so how do ya turn off the fast writes?.....and i came to the conclusion with nv4disp...tht its talkin about a nforce 4 chip?...well the motherbord dosnt use a nforce 4 chip....so cud tht be the conflction?

 

fast writes is an option in the bios.....get to the bios when you first power on the pc, usually yoiu need to press the esc key or possibly f2 f10 etc. you may get a message on the screen telling you which key if not check mobo manual
once in the bios look for the agp settings probably in the chipset menu...you can also try forcing agp 4x...can help sometimes.

nv4 disp is the main dll provided with the nvidia drivers not related to the nforce chipset....often left behind when uninstalling drivers thats why i always use a specialised driver cleaner

 

oh and i forgot to add, could be worth running the direct x diagonistic tool to see what it comes up with

start..
run..
type dxdiag
ok

 

direct x diagnostic tools came up with no problems...everything was okay appartly

he had already removed the old driver files using a cleaner...and he had already tried using agpx4

 

again can i press the issue about this Gart driver for the motherbord....im there using his pc, and everything plays fine without the driver...appart from a point in company of heroes when it crashes, and on stalker shadow of chernobyl when it crashes when there is a flash of lightning.....but as soon as he puts the gart driver back on the issue becomes worse.... what is this gart driver n why does it need to be on the motherbord because ive never heard of one

 

GART stand for "Graphics Address Remapping Table" Roughly, It has to do with the way the system stores video texture maps in memory, and the GART driver is the software that enables that function.

I've seen several threads that found video problems were caused by GART driver . . . but no common fix. The most often quoted involve using an older driver, and/or setting the AGP to 4X in the BIOS - all of which it appears you have tried.

Re: the nv4disp problem - this is a common issue. The fix most people seem to have found effective is downloading the latest video driver file, re-booting in safe mode, removing all the NVIDIA video drivers on your system, and then installing the new driver you downloaded earlier.

You may have already tried this - but if not - have you tried re-installing all the motherboard drivers? Just like when setting up a new board?
It certainly seems this is a driver related issue - but how to narrow down a fix has me stumped; short of starting completely from scratch.

 

starting from scratch lol, formatting his machine, n not going to put the gart driver on, n go from there