Video card probs - a little help please

[Guest]

I have been having intermittent problems with my video card lately. I have a Leadtek Visiontek GForce 2 GTS-Pro 64mg card. There seems to be a conflict with XP. I have had the card for about 18 months now, and it worked fine under ME. However, since installing XP several months ago, ocasion, the card screws up. First the screen goes blank, then a really nice checkerboard of colors comes up. Only a hard re-boot can get me going again. Is this problem usually driver related or is it a sign of a piece of hardware about to call it a day. I am currently using the 2183 version from the Leadtek site (2k/XP version). I have also tried the 20204 and 20103 versions as well. Anyone with this card having similar problems, or have any ideas? I don't want to have to buy a new card unless I have to. Thanksp4 1.9 423 pin Dell systenm724 mg ramTurtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card - driver 4161MSFS 2002PFC Cirrus yokeSaitek x35T stick and throttleXP home, upgrade installThanks.

[Guest SD Sim]

Hi Colin,The first thing I would do is check the IRQ allocations in your BIOS. See if your video card is sharing an IRQ address with another device. I'm not certain, but I think that Windows XP assigns IRQs in a manner that is different from the previous Windows OSs. Post your findings to get the ball rolling.

[Guest]

I see you did an upgrade install of XP. If possible, I suggest you do a complete install of XP on a freshly formatted partition. Weird things seem to happen with XP with an upgrade install.Also, this could be heat related.Lastly, consider trying the 28.32 WHQL drivers from the NVidia web site. Many favorable reports on these.

[Guest]

I'd take an opposite approach to many and revert back to the default WinXP drivers. Many folks with GF2's (I'm still using 'em) have found that a lot of problems can be resolved by using the 12.4x drivers as opposed to the later ones. (From 14.xx upward to 23.xx the driver mods are GF3-related and GF4-related after that). The default WinXP drivers are 12.40's and the WHQL 12.41's are still available from the driver archive at www.nvidia.com . Also, be sure that you clean out all traces of the existing drivers before installing any other version - especially since the XP install was an upgrade (there could still be some old ME "stuff" around).Trip

[Guest]

Thanks all. I know that a clean install of XP was probably a good idea - but the system has been stable as a rock except for this (only hard reboots since installing have been related to this problem), so that is really a last option. Here is the IRQ address info:The video card shares IRQ address number 3 with my pci video card (for my second monitor) and with an unused modem. I know nothing about IRQ bios stuff, so I look forward to learning more about this. Colin

[Guest SD Sim]

Hi Colin,Lets do the simple fix first. Move your PCI card to a different slot and see how things work. My guess is that this is the source of your problem.