Desperate for Radeon Help! Resolved!

[ikaika1]

I've had my R64 ViVo for a while now running in my W2k/VIA box, and it started to annoy me that I couldnt get any of the recent driver sets to work at all (I was running the rather slow CD drivers). They'd install, then when rebooting, bring me into W2k, and freeze the screen. At first id get the blue background, then freeze, but the 3100 driver set gets to the point of giving me a very scrambled picture of the small box that says "loading your settings" ect, but frozen, illegible, and completely wrapped around the screen while stuck at the top. So I did what anyone who wanted the full potential of their video card would do, I reformatted. Now I have a clean w2k install. I loaded the software in this order:

1) Via 4-1's v. 4.25a
2) All of the w2k updates, hotfixes for VIA AGP ect.
3) Explorer 5.01
4) Service pack 1
5) DX8
6) Radeon Drivers 3100

Well, it didnt work. I get a blank black screen whenever I boot into w2k. I was really hoping that the card would work correctly, but it didnt, and I'm starting to get discouraged. Can anyone tell me what I might have done wrong? I am, as the post suggests, getting desperate :frown: .
Thanks

BTW, I'm using w2k, the classic athlon on an abit ka7 (KX133), with 256m (128x2) of Mushkin/Crucial (yeah i mixed em).

 

[Taz4158]

Go to the ATI\GART directory and rename or delete atigart.exe.

 

[ikaika1]

Ummm. I searched my entire computer for that file, and came up with zilch... perhaps my problem is related to this interesting development?

 

[tjdavis1138]

Goto the system configuration utility under systems tools in the accessories menu.

Disable the ATIPOLAB entry under startup. Re-boot and it **should** work ok. The ATI driver's will conflict with your via agpgart file when you install the ATI driver's.

 

[Grouch]

You might look around over at Rage3D for tons of good info and help on ATi cards.

 

[ikaika1]

Hey Davis, I dont see, ATIPOLAB, or the system configuration utility you suggested I try. Are you referring to 9x or 2k? I dont even have an ATIPOLAB exe on my HD. Only 3 exe's that end in xx. I think theyre ATIpaxx.exe atihnxx.exe and i dont have access to the computer to find out the third and to verify the first two.

 

[Hawk]

Try the 3073 drivers, and you are suppose to do the hot fix AFTER you install the radeon drivers.

Usually I do my install in this order on my MSI 6309 and hasn't given me a problem yet:

4in1
Service pack
Radeon drivers
Hot fix
Directx 8
IE updates, etc.

I have no idea why it's not working...are you overclocking anything? RAM, chip, AGP, etc.?

 

[ikaika1]

None of the drivers work for me at this point Hawk, wiht the exception of the CD drivers, which I've decided I will NOT settle for any longer. The 3100's have been, for all intents and purposes, even more stable than the 3073's in terms of installing. Ill try installing the Hotfix over what I've done, and see what happens. In response to your question, I have a few things O'Ced, FSB is at 105 (ram at HCLK+PCI), and my 750's cache is set at 1/2 @788 (394 effectively, the result of fsking with it and cutting a trace with my screwdriver by accident, aint i lucky?), but thats all, nothing is grossly out of spec. Someone just posted an interesting theory about my KA7 and its BIOS settings at rage3d (the only reply there in 3 days). It seems I should Flash and play with some AGP and CPU pull up settings. Its solved some other peoples problems, so who knows? Ill probably have to wait until Wednesday to try the BIOS though.

 

[Pocatello]

I don't have a Radeon, but I think it could be DX 8.0. Try DX 7.0a.

 

[ikaika1]

The 3100's and the other driver set are designed specifically for DX8, so I'm almost positive it would be a bad idea to try DX7. Im trying a few Rage3D suggestions right now.

 

[tjdavis1138]

My bad I totally blew by the fact that your on win2k. Not sure where it's at in win2k. ATIPOLAB is the agp gart file for the ati card. It is not compatible with via chipsets. At least my system wouldn't work with it enabled. It automatically loads each time you start up windows. Maybe one of the win2k guys could tell you how to get to the startup programs for that os.

 

[Watrskr41]

May I ask what these "hotfixes" are???

 

[ikaika1]

Small Patches and registry tweaks for W2k given to VIA chipset owners by Microsoft so that our friggin AGP will work in a semi stable manner until they come out with SP2.:|

 

[JMorton10]

>1) Via 4-1's v. 4.25a
2) All of the w2k updates, hotfixes for VIA AGP ect.
3) Explorer 5.01
4) Service pack 1
5) DX8
6) Radeon Drivers 3100
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I have the same setup except I'm using the 3073 drivers & everything works great for me.

 

[Hawk]

Um, if you noticed the message after installing the hot fix, it says everytime you change hardware, you should reapply the patch, so I am guessing you have to do that after installing the video card drivers.

 

[PeAK]

The Abit KA7 needs to be coddle a bit via the BIOS

by setting the driving value controlling the AGP drive strength. This is one the most critical factor but the following thread discusses others

 

[ikaika1]

Thanks guys, I fixed it. My thread at Rage3d thought it would be a good idea to fiddle with the BIOS, so I updated it and changed the I/O voltage to 3.4. That did it, didnt really need to do anything else. Pretty snazzy if you ask me. Wish I had tried it sooner. Thanks again for all your help.