Obscure ATI video card problem, any suggestions?

[GnatGoSplat]

I'm having a very obscure video card problem that I would like to solve.
I was given a free Sony Vaio P4 2.533GHz minitower computer, 1GB DDR, 100GB HDD. I threw a cheap SATA card in it and use it for cloning drives and running old hardware off its parallel port. The computer is running Windows 7 x86.

Anyway, my brother-in-law needed a video card in a pinch, so I gave him the AGP MX440 card out of my Vaio since it's mainly just a spare that I use once in-awhile.

Problem 1: I have an old ATI X1300/X1550 32-bit PCI video card, threw it in my Vaio, and when I drop into the desktop, it's a black screen with mouse pointer. Windows 7 has built-in WDDM drivers for the video card. I can get to the desktop if I boot into safe mode and go into the registry to disable Aero. However, it is SUPER DUPER SLOW, completely unusable. It's not because the card is PCI, because it used run the 3rd and 4th monitors flawlessly at work before they upgraded me to an iMac. It worked great and supported Aero then, but at home on my Vaio, it's terrible and Aero results in black screen. I also tried the latest legacy 10.2 drivers, but no improvement. I wondered if the poor performance is due to the card not grabbing an IRQ, it is showing IRQ as (-2).

Problem 2: Due to the above problem, I tried using a spare MSI-brand ATI HD 6450 PCIe card that I picked up for $10AR, and using a spare PCIe to 32-bit PCI adapter. It works fine, until the driver is installed. Then it hangs at "Welcome". The hard-drive light still flashes, so it's doing something, but won't get past that. I tried both 14.1 driver and the one before it. Neither worked. The card works fine plugged into a real PCIe slot in another PC, so I know it's not the card. I know it's not the PCIe-to-PCI adapter, because it works perfectly with my MSI GTX460 card and the latest 335.23 nVidia drivers (albeit with reduced performance).

Any ideas on things I could try for either problem?

 

[denis280]

AGP MX440 card out of my Vaio

ATI X1300/X1550 32-bit PCI video card, threw it in my Vaio

MSI-brand ATI HD 6450 PCIe

Clear CMOS. to many change when on

 

[Ketchup]

I am also wondering if there are still remnants of Nvidia card on that machine, as both the cards you have tried are ATI.

As denis280 mentioned, what does the BIOS look like, specifically referring to video? Does the motherboard have integrated video?

 

[Ketchup]

double post

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Yeah, having remnants of nVidia drivers + running an ATI card = problems

 

[alkemyst]

I'd agree with others, give the clear CMOS a shot first and then do a driver wipe (should be one on NVIDIA's site).

The problem is some of these older cards don't install the proper way on newer OSes.

 

[Smoove910]

have you tried the Omega Drivers? Back in the day, they were quite awesome and allowed you to install over existing drivers (at least it worked for me). It's possibly worth a shot if you are at your wit's end:

http://www.omegadrivers.net/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=section&id=1&Itemid=54

 

[GnatGoSplat]

No luck. Here's what I tried, with both cards.
1. Clear CMOS.
2. Went into BIOS, exit and save without changing anything to fix CMOS checksum errors.
3. Ran DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) from Guru3D site in safe mode and removed all nVidia and AMD drivers.
4. Installed fresh AMD drivers.
5. Rebooted.

Results: Computer boots, HD 6450 sometimes doesn't make it out of the Welcome screen. Rarely, but sometimes it will. When it does, it ends up in a black screen with mouse pointer, but there is HDD activity. X1300 does the same thing. Sometimes the X1300 will flash a desktop briefly, sometimes it won't. When it does, it often has the "ATI Display Driver has stopped" notification in the system tray. The computer can't really be interacted with.

When I boot into Safe Mode and go into Event Viewer, I can see MANY services did not start. Reason being, "A device attached to the system is not functioning."

BIOS settings are very few. The only settings relating to video are in the PCI Configuration (Award BIOS). It has:

Slot 1 IRQ [Auto]
Slot 2 IRQ [Auto]
Slot 3 IRQ [Auto]
VGA BIOS Sequence [PCI/AGP]

I did try manually assigning IRQs and toggling VGA BIOS Sequence to AGP/PCI. Didn't help, and manually assigning IRQs doesn't seem to have any effect in Windows 7.

The Vaio has an Asus motherboard with SiS chipset. It doesn't physically have onboard video, there is no VGA port or video header anywhere on the board, but the chipset has the circuitry for integrated video built-in and this is detected by Windows. It just loads the Standard VGA Graphics driver. I've tried with it both enabled and disabled in Device Manager (there is no way to disable it in BIOS).

I looked at the Omega drivers, and looks like the last OS they supported was XP. No Windows 7 drivers (there's a link, but just says, "Nothing here yet, but stay tuned.").

I feel like it has to be something with the ancient BIOS (which dates back to 2003), because the X1300 worked just fine on a Dell Core 2 Duo era machine. It does have the newest BIOS Sony ever released, but I wonder if there's a very similar Asus retail board whose BIOS could work.

Also tried a different PSU in case the OEM PSU was a bit tired, but no change. No bloated caps on the motherboard either.

 

[Ketchup]

I would put an extra drive in there with a fresh windows/ driver install and see if the problem goes with it.