| Author |
Message |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 5:15 am: | |
Can an incorrect video driver cause a lock up on a cold boot but will work just fine on a warm boot?
I have a board with a SIS730S chipset with onboard AGP VGA. I've tried several different versions of the drivers except the ones that comes with the board -- as I do not have the mobo disk.
I can set the display to any resolution but only up to 256 colors and it will work fine with cold or warm boot, but anything higher wil cause a lock up on a cold boot. Then I reboot to safe mode, then reboot and receive an error "there is aproblem with your display settings..." I have the AGP and VGA drivers installed. Also it will lock up on the Direct3D test in dxdiag.
Although it sounds like a driver problem, I suspect hardware becauseof the way it works fine with a warm boot, but not cold.
Any Ideas? |
E.S.
| | Posted on Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 8:29 pm: | |
I would also suspect some other device conflicting with the Video. Perhaps a serial port you don't need, or a modem. It would be alot easier if you could identify the motherboard make and model as well, perhaps bios settings may come into play. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Monday, January 12, 2004 - 5:26 pm: | |
No conflicts. Machspeed/Jetway 830CF mobo. No serial or modem enabled. Every possible CMOS setting tried. It is stripped, only onboard video and onbord ethernet(so I can transfer drivers)enabled. Reseting ECSD allows for it to stay off for several minutes before cold boot. After several minutes it willl screw up again. uless I reset ESCD. I suspect bad ROM BIOS chip. or damaged chipset, but everyone keep saying "driver." |
E.S.
| | Posted on Monday, January 12, 2004 - 8:27 pm: | |
The 256 color problem leads me in the direction of drivers as well. Just a thought but have you considered replaceing the onboard video with an inexpensive AGP card just for diagnostic purposes. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 11:42 am: | |
This particular board will only take a 4x Nvidia TNT series, but not TNT2. Can't find one. But I'm fairly sure it would work. I dont't suspect the AGP bus, but maybe. I could buy a new mobo for the price of a card that may not work on the system, and would have no other use for. I bought this board soley for the onboard video. |
E.S.
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2004 - 10:17 pm: | |
Your board must be a very early revision 830CF.
From the Picture at http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/product/AMD/830CF/830CF.htm It looks like a PCchips M810. There were alot of issues with the early revisions of this board and AGP/video functionality due to memory incompatabilities. Anyway to check memory with a swap? |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 1:47 pm: | |
Interesting. I had thought about that. The guy I got this board from had swaped the memory out from another machine before he sold it to me (with 1.2 Atholon ,2 sticks 128MB/PC133.) He told me it was PNY but it turned out to be K Byte.
He told me it was PC100. The board is supposed to handle 100/133. I had suspected memory when I found out, so I did some tests. Since the the CPU was clocked at 100, I tried that first, then I tried it asychronous at 133, then I ran Doc Memory on it (which tested fine), then I tested with one stick at a time. I went as far as disabling video bios shadowing to see if it would have the same problem with a warm boot. But, with no other PC100 or PC133 to swap out from my other machines I wasn't able to try swaping out. I kind of hope that this is the problem. I'll do a search, but if you have any links to the information you got about memory/AGP problems, let me know.
Thanks very much for the information. |
E.S.
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 3:52 pm: | |
Besides personal experience with the M810 boards the best place on the WEB for info on all PCchips boards is Pcchips lottery at http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q3998142/pcchips/
search the web for an application called ctbios copy the extracted program to a boot floppy and execute it from a DOS prompt, this should give you any info on the exact manufacturer of the board. If it is Hsingtech than be assured it is an PCchips knockoff manufactured for Jetway.
It may also be an MSI variant. Thats just so you can get a bearing on the exact manufacturer and one or two more sources for tech support. I am curious about the problem and would appreciate it if you post back here at Hardware Hell with the results. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 4:15 pm: | |
It is made by Jetway. I've ran AIDA32, Fresh Devices and others. I also asked Machspeed if Jetway had manufactured this board for them, and they said yes. But, I'll run that ctbios you suggested.
I do think you may be right about the memory incompatability -- this could also explain why it locks up on any 3D test, even Direct3D.
|
E.S.
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 5:06 pm: | |
Check out this FAQ on the M810 SiS730S board Also might apply to all 730S based boards
http://radel.inet.net.nz/m810lmr.html
|
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 5:17 pm: | |
If you're reffering to the power supply, I had suspected this also and moved it to a new case with a 350W, not a high quality one, but it meets the specs.
I just ran CTBIOS and all it reported was:
Computer ID :FC, Type :AT
BOIS Date :01/07/03
Award BIOS found :
|
E.S.
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 8:09 pm: | |
Not very revealing in this case. And yes about the power requirements. So at least the power is ruled out as the culprit. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - 10:59 pm: | |
Machspeed just sent me a motherboard driver disk for this board. So, just to eliminate drivers, I reinstalled Win98SE and the drivers. Same problem.
Back to hardware. |
E.S.
| | Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 10:06 am: | |
What' else is left? Memory I would guess. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 12:47 pm: | |
Damaged chipset? Or ROM BIOS chip? -- since resetting the ESCD allows it to stay powered off for awhile longer without acting up. |
E.S.
| | Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 8:22 pm: | |
A bios test is easy enough, reflash it with the most current version. The chipset may be a little more difficult since the video is part of the north bridge. A cheap Geforce2 card should be a good tool for AGP test purposes. But I would still not rule out the memory as it may affect P.O.S.T. as well. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 8:59 pm: | |
The memory works fine for everything else. I'm reffering to the chip itself. I did reflash with the latest, it said there were no write errors, but there was a section that it said was not updated. This made me suspicious. I asked the vendor for the original ROM image, but they kept wanting to know why and never really answered me.
I'm trying to get a cheap AGP card off ebay to test the AGB bus itself. If the AGP bus is gone, I'll trash the board because it only has 3 PCI slots and I don't want to populate it with a PCI video card. I'm trying to get ahold of a friend to borrow a stick of SDRAM, but no luck yet. The town I live in, you almost have to order everything (nothing in stock.)
Thanks for giving me ideas. Keep 'em coming, I'll listen to any ideas.
|
E.S.
| | Posted on Friday, January 16, 2004 - 8:36 pm: | |
Get the AGP test done and try a memory swap than get back to me. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Saturday, January 17, 2004 - 7:58 pm: | |
No memory of the specs I need is available in town, but I just bought a cheap AGP card off Ebay that I should have by the end of the week.
I'll let you know. |
Wayne Lewis
| | Posted on Friday, January 23, 2004 - 8:00 pm: | |
I received an AGP card today and it works just fine, so that means the AGP bus is good. Now I just need to try the memory swap. If that doesn't work, then the onboarg AGP is damaged in the chipset.
Thanks |
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