I know it's an old computer - But a new Geforce 6200 AGP 512 locks the computer up in normal mode but not in safe mode.

[dynaryder]

Hi - I am new to this computer repair forum stuff. I have a few computers in my house that have always been "adequate". I am not a gamer or anything. I use them for email, word processing, connecting to my printer, some research of mechanical topics, facebooking and some buying and selling on ebay. One of my desktop computers which was about a 2007 version with Windows XP SP2 had crashed a while ago and I had no time or money to fix it. I decided to get it running again, so I installed an XP upgrade and repair so it now has SP3 in it. My plan is to make this machine suitable run windows 7 or 8/8.1 (for obvious reasons in this day and age). Windows upgrade advisor said that I needed to deal with several items as follows:
1. More space on a hard drive (I could swap the position of the 60gb drive but why?)
2. A graphics adaptor with at least 256mb of RAM
3. More on board RAM (1gb minimum)
4. A different email program (which is not a hardware issue)
5. It was not a listed item but I installed a CD/DVD RW drive.

I installed 2gb of RAM (the max it will accept). It works a lot more smoothly. I talked nice to one of my tech friends who has some lines on a few good used low priced 500gb - 1tb hard drives (the machine presently has 2 drives with 20gb & 60gb that are only about half full) - One will be in my hands soon. Finally, I recently obtained a new eVGA GeForce 6200 AGP 512mb video card for a low, low price. It is this last item which has given me the grief.

After installing the adaptor, I looked at the BIOS and reset a few values AGP 3.0 was supported so I set the aperture to 1gb and 8X for the speed, I guess. I could not find a reference to the original onboard graphics adaptor anywhere in any feature on the BIOS. It appeared to have "self-diabled" upon installation of the AGP adaptor. The computer fired up okay and it went through some kind of search for a driver which it seemed to find. The device manager shows a number of 6.14.11.7519 NVIDIA for the version of the driver. I then installed the driver from the CD in the package. It all seemed to install okay and needed a reboot in order to take effect. After the restart, the machine would go through the procedure and get to the the page where I had to choose my name and log in. At this point, the operating system froze. I let it sit for about a minute but it did not unfreeze. I finally had to push reset to restart the machine. I repeated this several times and was able to get a minute more of running time or less than the first attempt - it seemed completely random. I managed to get the task manager up on one attempt which showed no huge RAM usage (1700mb free) and 83% CPU usage...normal for startup on this machine. The screen locked so I could see the numbers. This has recurred at least a dozen times since I first tried.

I ended up booting into safe mode and the computer works. I uninstalled the driver at about failed start #6 and tried starting again in normal mode. It appeared to start okay and not freeze so, I reinstalled the drivers again...After restart - the same problem...and over and over again. I began looking for answers online. I tried several things. Uninstalling the driver, installing an older one - same thing...Uninstalling that driver and installing another yet older one....same thing and maybe worse) but all through it - every time in safe mode, no problems...Reading about nvidia drivers seemed to indicate that, unless a clean sweep is somehow made when removing the drivers, there are, in all likelihood, other files that did not get removed that can conflict with the next installation. I manually searched for every instance of evga, geforce and invidia and deleted them. After booting up again, it still froze after a minute, which required a reset and reboot into safe mode for another inspection - where I found out the present driver. I left the computer running and, after about one hour, there is no lockup in safe mode. I have no other drivers to try so, I am at a loss. Can anyone hepl me with this one?

Computer info follows:
MoBo - MSI ms7222 1.1 PM8PM-V Series (MS-7222 v2.0) Micro-ATX Mainboard. (Supports AGP 3.0 8X/4X)
VIA® P4M800Pro chipset & VIA® VT8237RPlus chipset
Intel Pentium 4/ Prescott (LGA 775) processor socket w/Intel Celeron 3.06gb CPU
2gb 240 pin DDR2 RAM
Optimax Titan PSU Model ATX 450PS (input 115-230V @ 6A) outputs +3.3V @ 28A, +5V @ 35A, +12V @ 22A,
-5V @ 0.5A,-12V @ 1A, +5Vsb @ 2A
Windows XP Build 2600.xpsp_sp3_qfe.130704-0421:
Netgear WPN311 WiFi Adaptor
HDD 1 - 20gb Maxtor 7200 rpm IDE drive with OS and several other programs and utilities 14gb+ used, 5gb+ free
HDD 2 - 60gb Maxtor 7200 rpm IDE drive with older (XP)OS, many gb of files and programs 32gb used 23gb free.
(From the MoBo Manual) The AGP slot allows you to insert the AGP graphics card. AGP is an interface specification designed for the throughput demands of 3D graphics. It introduces a 66MHz, 32-bit channel for the graphics controller to directly access main memory. The slot supports AGP card for 8x/4x at 1.5v (3.3v is not supported).
The heat sink on the card is running at about 41 - 42C (measured with an infrared non contact thermometer)....

My question is now - What could possibly be going on in this computer - hardware or software related - that would cause this? Did I just end up with a video adapter that "does not play well" with the chipsets on my MoBo?....any ideas on what I should do to fix it? (and the obvious answer is get a newer computer, but there is no money for that right now).

 

[dynaryder]

A lot more playing with and asking questions about this problem resulted in discovering that the video card did not like hardware acceleration at all. It will run more or less properly when it is completely disabled.
Question - Is that the reason it ran okay in safe mode - because hardware acceleration was not enabled?

You tube video still, at times (but not always), runs choppy.

There is still the matter of rapidly moving my mouse back and forth (resulting in the cursor rapidly moving back and forth on the screen) causes the video and audio to get a bit choppy. Is this normal?

I am still using the old driver.....

 

[hang-the-9]

Was this a new or used card? Did you try doing a BIOS update and reset the BIOS to defaults ( you changed video settings for some reason, no need to unless you know the card is working on default settings)? The power supply is poor quality but should be able to handle a low end video card like the 6200. If the system does not work even after a BIOS update and reset, I am going to guess you got a used card and the card is bad.

 

[dynaryder]

Hang-the-9....thanx for posting....life got in the way over the past few weeks and, as I had alluded, I was ultimately trying to get the computer to run windows 7 anyway.

In answer to your Q. re the card being new or used - it WAS new. It came in an eVGA box, in a sealed bag. I was using the computer on & off with no issues.

Then....I got my new 1 tb HDD. I finally installed it, partitioned it and did a clean install of Windows 7. Everything in the computer seems to work okay - except for the video again. In W-7, there is no support for disabling hardware acceleration though, so I am back to the screen randomly freezing. If I keep the screen resolution lower, it may be able to run a bit longer between freeze-ups (that may be either random or psychological on my part though).

The "stumper" is that, if I start in safe mode, the graphics run fine with NO freezing. This also was the case in Windows XP.

I tried different drivers. I am now using a driver originally for Vista as I read several postings elsewhere about earlier drivers seeming to work better with older machines. I still have a couple of yet older Vista drivers to try. In regards to updating the bios, I have what should be a later version (there was only one option for newer) but I have hesitated to try it so far....I am still trying to get past all of W-7 automatic updates prior to doing any additional testing of this setup.

So far anyway, if I don't do anything rash, it has remained running for over an hour now.

I will keep you posted.

 

[hang-the-9]

Safe mode almost always works fine even with a bad video card because it only uses basic functions. Did you reset the BIOS to defaults? You played around with the AGP settings, you'd want to set everything to defaults there. The issues you have, after ruling out any software issues with a clean Windows setup, usually come from hardware issues. Bad card, weak or bad power supply, bad motherboard, RAM maybe.

 

[dynaryder]

So, life got in the way of this "stupid" computer project again. I was away for a bit and got talking with one of the men I was working with. He had a several year old laptop with W-7 on it....and i had my laptop with Win XP...a few evenings, we sat in the rec hall at the camp and looked at settings in our laptops.

I came up with something on mine.... I saw that the colour was set at 16bit - NOT at 32bit as on the project at home.

After I came home, I did all the W-7 stuff and forgot all about this though. So, I got to thinking about this ....I fired up the computer on XP and tried the 16 bit setting ..... I began tweaking up the hardware acceleration and trying stuff. I set it all the way and, so far, so good - NO freeze ups yet.

So now - question...Would setting it down to 16 bit substantially lower the resource demand and "cure" the problem?

Now to work on the problem in W-7.... I found something out on my work mate's computer - how to disable aero effects. I am going to see if that will cure the problem on W-7.....

And -9 .... Thanx for helping!