Mark Shannon

Video Card Problems

I just assembled a new computer, and for the video card I'm using a Sapphire Radeon X600XT 256MB PCI Express card. The entire computer has been running fine, but on several occasions, the video card has failed.

The screen goes blank for about 30 seconds, then comes back on, saying hardware rendering has failed and that it will be swtiching to software rendering. I have the most up to date drivers installed, so I can't really find out what the problem is. Shoujld I just return the card and get a new (or different) one?

If you need more specs for the computer just tell me and I'll post em.

My DVD\'s

WayneO

Does it happen with the same program or just randomly? Also, do you have fast writes enabled in your motherboards BIOS? If yes, it would probably be best to disable that. If there are any other video card related settings in the BIOS, I'd disable those as well.

If the best advice is "listen for yourself", then why offer your opinion?

Mark Shannon

I'm not sure about the BIOS settings, but I'll check on those, thanks.

It's usually just randomly. For instance, it happened once when I only had three MSN windows and one Firefox window open. Then another time when I was trying to open the install program for the updated drivers (failed as soon as I double clicked).

My DVD\'s

Mike_J_Potter

How big of a power supply are you running. I had similar problems with a 9800 pro. It turned out to be the power supply was too small.

Mike Potter

Last 3 films watched
Natural Born Killers (DVD)
Duece Bigalow 2 (theater)
Forrest Gump (1080I)

WayneO

A good power supply is important..............there can be so many things, many not obvious to test, when running into issues like this. A component rundown might help further. Besides disabling BIOS enhancement features(fastwrites, sideband addressing, etc), checking your memory with a program like memtestis good to make sure you have no issues there. If you're running two sticks, try and test each one by itself and see if the issue goes away. Let us know how things go.

If the best advice is "listen for yourself", then why offer your opinion?

Mark Shannon

Well I seem to have gotten rid of the problem. After restarting the computer each time this happened, XP would come up with a dialog saying "recovered from a serious error" and bring a website for online help up. At first i figured the MS website, of all places wouldn't be able to help.

Well, I actually looked at it, and low and behold, it said a certain module in VComm SystemSuite was the cause. I thought this couldn't be possible, because I have it running in my other computer and it's never caused any problems.

So I decided to uninstall SystemSuite the other day, and whaddayaknow, the problem hasn't occurred once since. Looks like those people at microsoft actually know what they're talking about.

Thanks for all the help.

My DVD\'s