Video card drivers wont "stick".

One of the screws on the backplate of my video card is a little stripped, so when i found my precision screwdriver kit, i figured id make sure it was screwed in all the way (it was about half screwed, and i thought was creating heat issues) i used a can of air to spray out the heatsink on the video card and the fan.

I plop it back in and reboot, first thing that happens is right after windows initial loading screen (the one with the blue load bar going left to right repeatedly) it gets stuck at a black screen for a long time, i leave it for a while but nothing happens(This isnt always the case sometimes after a while with different drivers it would get through the black screen but the drivers wouldnt be correctly installed), so i power it off then on again, this time it goes into windows, but it seems as if my drivers arent installed at all. I go to dxdiag and the screen goes black when i click display then ticks back on. In dxdiag it says nothing is available or enabled under display. I forgot to mention on the last reboot i installed bf2 and installed "its" directx9, even though i didnt want to because when you cancel those direct x installs during game installs sometimes it rolls back the whole installation.

So at first (before i reformatted) i thought my directx got screwy, i looked for the latest distrib and reinstalled it, then i removed my video card drivers and use NFR to make sure they were off my comp, reboot, windows boots up flawlessly without video card drivers, and performance seems almost better (when i drag windows around its less laggy if not the same). I install my favorite "xg warcat 7.4 pure" drivers ( i know they arent officially supported but they have never not worked before this ), then i reboot.

This is where my memory gets a teeny foggy (cause i installed about every version of ati's catalyst driver in existance and rebooted accordingly). Depending on what driver i would install windows would get the black screen after initial loadscreen or this new fun thing. Black screen with white text "windows has prevented something something from damaging your computer the driver was in an infinite loop something something to prevent damage to your computer. STOP 0x000000EA (0x84f44020 <--- 0's could be O's followed by 3-4 more sets of numbers in the parenthesis. Then right below that it said atidvag.

Power off power on, install ooooold catalyst drivers and they seem to click, i test direct 3d functionality and the cube is FLYING freaking fast on every dxlevel test 7-8-9, i remember it being a little slower, never the less i was overjoyed. So i slept, when i awaken i reboot because i was reinstalling Cs:Source and windows updates (since i had reformatted thinking my windows was crappin out). Reboot after "successfully" getting drivers to stick after the windows loadbar, black screen for a while then it boots and everything looks crappy and windows lag when i drag them around........

And now this is where im at, i really doubt i have physically or statically damaged my video card as it works (almost better) without any drivers installed for it, im on it right now infact. I have tryed reseating the card several times, i made sure the power cable it requires is plugged into it, i even reformatted, but nothing i do seems to fix this.

So, does anyone know where i can check my device irqs for more than 1 second when windows starts up. I noticed my agp something or video something was irq 11 and i saw some other stuff that was irq 11 (i think, it goes by too fast) and thought maybe giving it its own irq or something would help. Even though ive been running the same setup forever.

Lastly, im running
OS - xp pro sp2 w/ latest updates
video card - x800 aiw agp
memory - working patriot ddr400 pc3200
cpu - p4 2.4 533 fsb oc'd to 2.9
mobo - msi 865 neo2 pe
soundcard - audigy 2 zs

im in a real tough spot, as reformatting will nearly always fix anything for me. so i really appreciate anyone who reads through all this, and knows anything.

im off to reinstall drivers forever until they work. ill be back...
thx ~phalxor


otf edit- i cant find my post in the list of posts only via search so i hope this one shows up. sorry if im double posting.


2 symptoms i forgot to mention, driver installation goes really fast, way faster than normal, as if it isnt installing correctly, also 3rd party drivers (xg warcat) dont ask me to "continue anyways" with the installation as they always used to. AND clock always resets upon failure to load my video drivers upon boot (which usually requires a power off then on restart) i let it sit at the black screen for a while and it froze everything and created an awful squeeling noise as if i had crashed due to overheating while playing something.

After that screeching that just happened i reboot, and the drivers "seem" to be installed(and my clock didnt reset), no laggy windows everythings smooth, i go and check dxdiag no black screen upon looking at display, only thing that isnt working is the agp texture acceleration that should be enabled its listed as "not available"(when im in this state im able to play Cs:Source with no problems, then as soon as i reboot the drivers are messed up, dxdiag says nothing is available under display<----just tested this). This is where i was at last night before i went to sleep but im nearly certain that upon reboot the drivers will not be active anymore. Im off to test it right now.<---- confirmed in parenthesis a sentence back.

 

OK so I posted in this thread, doesn't feel so very different from the other one.

Perhaps if you were to rephrase your question quite a bit shorter It would be easier to understand.

It's not unusual to get shared interrupts with the video, don't worry about it.
The video is fundamentally important so to get it working I would remove all other cards, usb stuff etc.

Then work through your drivers systematically as I suggested.

 

thank you for posting here, i appreciate your patience. the only reason i ask is usually in forums if theres 2 exact same threads one will be deleted and i wanted to have this one to survive.

i will try doing what you suggested, sorry for being so long winded, i figured the more info the better, in-case any certain symptom may pertain to a certain fix.

again i appreciate it.

 

im not sure what you meant by "the old standy"

but i removed everything unnescesary(usb hub, soundcard, niccard) and removed all drivers, square one

bootup fine without drivers, install my preferred video drivers, reboot. windows shows the load screen then the monitor clicks like the video is gonna kick in again for windows and the screen is black for nearly half an hour(this is before the login screen). power off then on and windows loads up and drivers seem to be installed(but ghetto as usual).

thats my long story short, but a quick question, Why won't windows prompt me to "continue anyway" or "stop installation" upon installing 3rd party drivers?, to me it seems like it isnt installing them properly as the installation is very quick.


For now to do anything (play games) if i ever reboot i have to repeat all the listed steps.

my apologies if im doing this the wrong way, or not following your instructions properly.

luvs the majorgeeks community ~ phalxor

 

Apparently i wasnt patient enough, or atleast not thorough enough, but having my nic and sound card seated in different pci slots, allows everything to work smoothly... im still amist as to why when i have none of the devices in i would still get that problem. (thats where i wasnt very thorough)

But as i said, i am able to reboot the computer endless times and still have the drivers correctly installed AGP texture acceleration is also enabled and available now in dxdiag. Shutdown and startup seem even faster now.

Does this make sense to you studiot? does it sound like it was conflicting irqs or is it totally unrelated.


i need to work on being more short and sweet, anyways im incredibly happy my computer is working once again, and wouldnt have tryed taking everything out and moving it around(atleast for a week or so) if it wasnt for studiot. so i thank-you x999999

 

I'm still not sure what is working and what isn't.

However you do sometimes find that moving a card to another PCI slot mysteriously cures problems.

Normally the graphics card should go in the slot nearest to the processor, but if that one doesn't float your boat I wouldn't worry about it.

Try to keep as much space as possible around the graphics card for cooling reasons.

If you look in the system BIOS there are two settings that might influence what is happening.

Some BIOS have a setting to force the IRQ to a particular PCI slot.
Some also have a setting to allow the Operating System to assign the IRQs, which is normally best with XP.
Since you do not have an AGP card (are you sure) you will gain benefit from switching this off in BIOS.
Also set the memory assigned to AGP to zero, to make sure all your memory is available to Windows.

 

sorry for not being clear enough, but i did write under my specs that my ATI x800 AIW is an agp video card, therefore it must remain in its agp slot.

now that i got basic video working, im trying to get this usb hub to work, as well as my oldschool nomad jukebox zen xtra mp3 player. but thats a completely different issue

do irq's only pertain to pci slots or is the agp slot controlled by irq aswell?

 

Yeah you are right you did say you have an AGP card. I should have checked properly.

Yes the AGP slot has (and requires) access to the IRQ system.
It is different from the PCI in that it has faster access to the memory without going through the slower PCI bus chips.

Good luck with the new regime, keep us posted how you get on.

 

well like i said in my post before this one, im trying to get certain usb devices to work, got the usb hub to work, but im having trouble getting my mp3 player drivers to install and recognize the mp3 player. Im not too worried about all that though.

What worries me now is, during any 3d intensive game at anytime(not often) the keyboard and mouse become unresponsive and it seems to "buffer" all of my keystrokes. I can take my hand off the keyboard and it will continue to execute either W A S or D depending on what i just tryed to do (circle strafe a mofo and rocket him into the earth) which ultimately fails because i lose control every so often. I managed to fix this before tweaking with drivers but since i reformatted my fix got undone, and im not sure exactly what i did to fix it. The mouse will just become unresponsive but then it will kick in but it doesnt buffer my mouse movements at all, it just turns off then on again after the keyboard is done unloading all its Que'd keys.

Anyways this is definitely off topic from my video card drivers not installing. So im gonna open a new thread (after searching for similar issues) and collect help there. And also this isn't really a hardware problem and this is in the hardware section.... just thinking aloud as usual. :zzz

 

OFFICIALLY BUMPED


OHHHMYYYYGODDDD, its ****ing back and for no ****ing reason. I took out my vid card to replace a stripped screw and to apply some more thermal paste. Put it back in and works on the next reboot, go to sleep leave my computer on. Come back to a black screen but my monitor light is green(meaning it detects the videocard) reboot same problem safe mode I can get right in. Uninstall the drivers and windows starts up just fine... i get the same STOP (insert numbers and letters) ati2dvag memory dump error sometimes if i try and boot with drivers installed. I'm off to download every version of catalyst and try and bury this monstrosity.

 

You can check device IRQ's in Device Manager:

Go to "My Computer" click on File > Properties

Click on the Hardware Tab
Click on Device Manager

View the device properties by double clicking on the device and click on the "Resource" tab and it will show the IRQ setting on the device.

 

I don't know if you've already tried the Microsoft Knowledge Base, but there's only two hits for 0x000000EA, and both are related to video driver problems....
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293078/en-us
The other article pertains only to nVidia cards, so I didn't link to it....
The more research I'm doing on this, the more I find that when it's software only, that it is almost exclusively an nVidia driver problem. If you don't have an nVidia card (and you don't) and in some very rare cases an Intel video chip (and you don't) the problem is most likely a hardware issue with the video card. You did mention that you cleaned the fan and heat sink, and that you applied more thermal grease. Did you apply the thermal grease to the video chip and/or heat sink? Is there a chance that you damaged something when removing the heat sink to apply the grease? When cleaning fans with canned air, it is highly recommended to unplug the fan from the board. If that fan starts spinning really fast, it can generate electricity (generators are essentially large electrical motors) and pump it back into the device. When I clean my CPU fan and video card fan, I ALWAYS unplug the fan. A friend of mine killed his motherboard a few years back by seeing how fast the CPU fan would spin blowing canned air onto it. There is one thing in the first post that I don't understand:

How would a 'half screwed' screw on a video card back-plate cause a heat issue?

 

it wasnt creating firm enough pressure between the heatsink and the video card(and noticed it was unusually hot), and mainly i was just bored and thought i would try something to mayb get a few degrees in(plus i had a replacement screw which i wanted to replace it with(which was non stripped)


but yeah... somehow(cant remember) i got my 3d applications to work and the driver to stay upon rebooting, but in dxdiag i had no agp texture acceleration available and i have been expieriancing alot of stability issues with my games, so i tryed some diffferent drivers, and what do you know i'm having the same issue and i cant get any drivers to install, all i can do is boot up into windows with no drivers what so ever

 

figured i'd bump this pos topic. i had it going solid for a few months now im back at square one.

somethings ive noticed along the way

-can run toribash endlessly.
-can run counterstrike source, de_dust2 ONLY
-cannot play cod4 anymore

anyone know anything about videocard memory and it going bad?

the video card i have is the x800 aiw 256 mb with gddr3, now this was awhile ago around 05 when i got it. wasn't gddr3 memory fairly new around then? just an idea.

 

Seems to me that for all the time and hassle you could just get a newer, better card. But since you have an AGP card, this may not be easy to do. When I responded months ago about the screw and the backplate and the heat issues, I was thinking about the backplate where the monitor connects to the video card, not the back of the card itself. So, now that I've read the clarification, I can definitely see how a bad screw could cause a heat issue. There is a real good chance the card itself is faulty. All I can suggest is to run these two programs and see what happens:
Video Card Stability Test
Video Memory Stress Test
Good luck and let us know what happens... I'll keep an eye out for a good AGP card for a reasonable price; if I find one, I'll provide a link....
:-D

 

dont mean to bump this or anything but It was definitely a PSU issue. The PSU worked but poorly and sometimes not at all but enough to make me think otherwise and this was a little bit after I already had a faulty power supply and replaced it with a "cool" one which apparently was faulty as well. right now I am on a really bad PSU with only 18A on the 12v and its a -400w but everything is solid. case closed for this pvt.geek

 

Thanks for the feedback.