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I just got yesturday a Visiontek Xtasy GeForce 4 MX 440. I installed the latest Nvidia drivers that I got from the VisionTek website. I uninstalled my old video card drivers, turned off the PC and put the new card in. Started it up and installed the new drivers thru the windows new hardware wizard. And twice the drivers didn't install correctly, a yellow x showed up on the device manager. So i reinstalled the driver a third time and they appear to work. Worked fine the first day, but today, the PC keeps freezing up.. at different times with different programs. Sometimes when I start ICQ, or IE6. So I uninstalled the 4 in 1 drivers and reinstalled the APG driver and still getting the error. So I uninstalled and download from nvidias website new drivers and still getting the problem.
Can anyone suggest better drivers? Or suggest a solution? I've cleaned my registry.. made sure my old drivers were all uninstalled. Thank you.

Quote ALL of your spec as specifically as possible man (manu, model, chipset etc), very diff to help until you do! Also include what OS you are running.

I would recommend at least unistalling your current video card drivers and then removing all the excess files and registry entries that are left over after unistallation of your new card as well as the previous video card.

Would that detonator cleaner work? Then reinstall.

Austin wrote:

Quote ALL of your spec as specifically as possible man (manu, model, chipset etc), very diff to help until you do! Also include what OS you are running.

Ok.. running
Aopen MK33 KT133 mobo
512 MB PC Crucial RAM
Lastest 4 in 1 drivers, lastest bios
Soundblaster Live 5.1 Mp3+
Windows XP Pro
300 watt power supply antec
20gb seagate ultra 66 5400 rpm hdd

Had a Power Color 64MB Evil Kryo video card before
What I did was, ran the uninstaller of the Kryo, turned PC off and took out old card. Put GF4mx into, started up winxp. Had the found new hardware wizard find the hardware and directed it to the drivers 29.42 that I got off of Visiontek website. The first 2 times I tried, it said the drivers weren't installed right, so I uninstalled and tried again and then it work.
So now, all the hardware in my Device manager are fine, everything is sharing the same IRQ, but that should be ok with WinXP and its' how it was set up before.

oh.. and I cleaned up my registry, getting rid of everything to do with the old video card. and i uninstalled and reinstalled the 4 in 1 agp drivers. newest ones.

Manually editing the registry is often frought with danger, perhaps try running System Restore and restore to an earlier date when you know the PC was running fine. When it shuts down after applying the change you could then uninstall the old gfx drivers, then install the latest GeForce gfx card drivers (see below).

Ideally you'd want 350W but since your PSU is Antec (reportedly the best) you should be totally fine there.

Even though you uninstalled you old drivers and did everything right, there is still a chance that your old drivers have left remnants in the Win\System folder, INF folder and registry. The only sure way of get rid of this stuff is to do a completely new install of Windows, but you shouldn't need to resort to that!

2 things which really jump out at me are your mobo (VIA KT133, very old) and SB Live (big probs with VIA chipsets). SB Live cards hog both the PCI bus and CPU, it is the former that is weak on the VIA chipsets and this exaserbates the problem, however a patch (VIA PCI Latency Patch) is widely available and is ALWAYS worth installing. Another good step is to get the latest WinXP (Win2000 will do) drivers for ALL of your hw, including BIOS. Be sure to check both the chipset (eg VIA & nVidia) as well as manu (eg Aopen & Visiontek) for the latest non-beta drivers, the manu website should list compatibility info and any tweaks or quirks.

I strongly expect it is your mobo, KT133 came out at the birth of the SktA mobos and as such could be causing compat probs. I have heard that VIA mobos and nVidia hw are the most prone to the infinite loop bug. In any case try looking at your BIOS settings, disable 'PCI Master Read Cache', that is often the culprit. Other measures are to note the settings and try altering anything regarding the AGP bus, sometimes changing 4x to 1x can help, at least until you find the route cause. In any case the latest mobo BIOS is always good to have, esp with new hw.

ok cool, I'll give your suggestion a try. everything is updated with the lastest drivers and bios.. so I guess the last thing to do is mess with the BIOS settings..

I'd try DL'ing the drivers from nvidia's site, installing those, and see what happens.

yeah tried that. Sadly that didn't work. Thank you

this VIA PCI Latency Patch is it official? I've tried to find it but the sites that have it are down.

Unfortunately VIA are still oficially denying all knowledge, and as such any patch is not official. It is certainly worth downloading and installing though, it effectively speeds up the PCI bus which is handy whether or not it is causing you problems. I can't rem where I got mine from now, or where it is. You could try (you may need to search for 'VIA Latency Patch', it's only a tiny download):

http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/

http://www.tweak3d.net/

http://www.motherboards.org/

or any search engine.

Just trying to uninstall my 4 in 1 AGP Driver and my Video card, so I can try starting fresh install of both drivers, but everytime I uninstall and reboot. WinXP will automatically reinstall them. Is there a way to turn this off. What I'm trying to do, is uninstall the gfx card drivers, set to Standard Video driver, reboot, then install the Video card driver, reboot and then install the AGP Driver. But Windows XP won't let me.

Looking in my Device manager under IO and memory.. I can see in the IO part my GF4mx and the AGP Controller 2 times.. and in the Memory part 3 times each. Is that normal?

one thing I did notice is that the card is hard to screw in. It's like it doesn't quite reach the screw hole. I've tried running without it screwed in so that I was sure it was properly seated. Anyone else have this problem?

I've had that problem with a certain TV Tuner card brand, definitly the problem of the card not my case...

The part that should be screwed isn't in the right place, too far bak... luckily this will probably be my last system upgrade and there's a notch underneath the screwhole that DOES line up with the hole on the case...

However, it does work and doesn't come out of the slot...

The term "bodge" comes to mind ,
IntelMole

I don't know what happen.. but I came home from work.. all ready to start working on my PC and trying to get it fix.. and I get in.. and the Screen saver is actually still working. so i was like.. wow it hasn't crashed yet.. after running for 8 hours.. so far it's crashed everyday I've gotten home since installing the new card.. So I log on, start messing around no problems.. Loading software up.. cause I stay up late reinstalling WinXP and still no problems.. Start talking to my gf on MSN messenger and surfing the net.. hours later.. still hasn't frozen up on me.. so I'm expecting it at any minute.. It has been freshing up on me so much that even at work the the computers there I keep thinking they are freezing up when they aren't... so.. now it's been like 15 hours of running.. and Still no freezing. It froze before I left for work.. and I rebooted went into the bios and changed something.. BUT I don't remember what the hell I changed... but it's stable finally.. give it a few more days.. see how it goes.. then I can start working on it again when i can trust it again. I had forgotten how GREAT a stable PC was thinking about tossing this thing out and getting a Mac... (no not really too poor) but so far it's working, and I wanted to thank everyone that helped me.

So it's not just me that can change one bios setting and forget which one it was!!



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