Preserved Topic: HELP! Video card not being nice

Woo hoo, gotta love Windows (or maybe its HP this time).

I bought a new vid card and went to install it tonight. It is an ATI Radeon 64MB DDR AGP 4X.

When I put the card in the slot and turn on the computer I get nothing but a long beep followed by two short beeps. There is nothing after that. The monitor stays on standby (orange light, not green light). I know the card is compatible with a 2X slot and that is what my HP supports (or claims).

Any ideas? I can't call ATI until tomorrow.

am not much good at hardware stuff.. only thing I can suggest is ya check ya have the card seated properly into the slot. Often it needs a good push. Make sure you support the m/board before pushing too hard.. if the card isnt seated properly that may be the problem?.. perhaps



[This message has been edited by vogonpoet (edited 02-26-2001).]

Tried that one VP. Did that once when upgrading my RAM. Didn't push it in all the way. Oops.

Looks like I am going to have to disable my AGP VGA controller. Wish me luck. he he

I'll need it

I had lots of troubles with my graphic card. At the end I exchanged it with my brother. We are both happy now. Although I couldn't find any reference I think it didn't work fine with my MB and CPU.

Well that worked wonderfully. Now my montior shuts off about 15 seconds after windows starts to load. The taskbar comes up, the icons come up, then *click*. The monitor completely loses power! **$&^#**

What kind of c*****n BS is this?

Heh, Krets, I've said that you should buy a nVidia GeForce 2 based graphic card!



[This message has been edited by mr.maX (edited 02-26-2001).]

*uninstalls HTML Beauty*

Well...What chipset is your Motherboard running? If its the VIA chipset the Radeon has problems with it...Im sitting on a 32Mb DDR Raedon cause of the same thing. I didint get the Beeps, Win98 would boot up but anything Graphic intensive would lock up my system. Sometimes even opening Windows Explorer would lock it up I finally got fed up and took it out and replaced it with my old card.

From experiance ATI makes some crappy cards but this one was supposed to be different, I think ill stick with the Gforce from now on, nVIDIA chipset is great and they at least keep there drivers up to date unlike ATI.

Sorry I really dont have a fix for your problem, but The issue i covered in the begining might give ya a place to start lookin for a fix, and if you do find a fix please post back maybe i can use mine too!

You can check Cnet for the review, i read it a while back I dont know if its even still up, but they do talk about some compatability issues. Also try ATI's site to.

this reminds me exactly of my computer. we shut down my machine to put in a pcmcia controller (or whatever the hell the initials are) last week to test our wireless connection. when we turned it back on, the monitor remained in standby mode. so we turned off the monitor and unplugged it and it still had lights on! then we unplugged the computer as well. a little while later, we plugged both in and it started up just fine.

if my machine has to be shut down for any reason, it has to be unplugged and let stand for a while. this happens if we switch any card on the board.

edit: i also want to add that i have tried tech support with ATI and it was absolutely horrible. i wasted i dont know how many hours trying to get through on their non-800 number that was an international call to me (i was in the states then). the guy i talked to had no idea at all about winNT, which this card was supposedly supported by.

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Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

[This message has been edited by la'dsasha (edited 02-26-2001).]

Sheesh, I don't know what's up. I've tried everything that I can think of. I disabled the onboard VGA controller, that got rid of the beeps, thats when the monitor started shutting off on me.

My computer has an onboard ATI Rage Pro and I can hook the monitor back up to that and it works fine. I think the problem may stem from conflicts between the two ATI products. There was something about uninstalling any built-in ATI card. Therein lies my second problem. The ATI driver for the Rage Pro won't uninstall. It brings a pop up window saying "Unable to Initialize."

I never had these problems with my Voodoo. I might have to give up on the ATI products, it may just be the conflicts. Anyway, I plan on giving tech support a call tonight when I get home and hopefully they can figure it out. I just can't think of what else I could possibly do. My BIOS is the newest available from HP as well.

Hhmph. I was looking forward to using this card too. Its performance on high res and 32bit blew all the other cards out of the water in the reviews I read.

There may be 2 ways to uninstall the Rage Pro.

First most onboard vid (and sound cards) these days have a selection in the BIOS for disabling the onboard card.

Failing that if your computer is a bit older there may be a jumper on the motherboard you need to remove to disable the card. A call to HP/ATI tech support may give you more info on how to disable this.

Also do you have problems in Safe Mode?


Walking the Earth like Kane

Krets, that was soo low... (didn't you see the slimey at the end, I was j/k)

Anyway, if you're loosing video signal that probably means that your power supply cannot supply enough power (new graphic cards need a lot of power), you should change your power supply with some more powerful model (for example one that can provide you with 300Watt of power).

Also, ~GraFFix~, problems that you had with ATI and VIA maybe can be solved with the newest version of VIA's 4-in1 drivers.

Oh, and BTW Krets, Radeon isn't extremely powerful... As John Carmack (iD software) said, GeForce2 Ultra kicks Radeons ass real good (not to mention what will GeForce 3 do to other graphic cards when it is launched)

Hey bit, thanks for the suggestions. Actually, there are a couple of jumpers on the motherboard that I had to use to disable the onboard chip. That didn't help the monitor power. I haven't tried looking at the BIOS, I'll try that when I get home. What command do I use to get into the BIOS? (Can never remember.)

It boots just fine in safe mode. I have also thought about the power issue but the last thing I want to try.

I swear, this damn HP has given me nothing but troubles when it comes to installing new cards. With all the stuff I have replaced I could almost build a new computer. All I would need is a motherboard, processor, and a case.

To get into BIOS, press Del or F1 when you see BIOS startup screen...



[This message has been edited by mr.maX (edited 02-26-2001).]

WOW, ATI has some wonderful customer support. They told me to try a different monitor. Of course, how could I have been so stupid!?

Thanks Mr.Max Ill try that when i get home *crosses fingers*

Tech support SUX (that's why I haven't called any tech support so far )! Anyway, did you manage to fix anything? Are you still loosing video signal?



[This message has been edited by mr.maX (edited 02-27-2001).]

I was looking into getting a Radeon too, after all the bad things I've heard I think I'll change my mind. My girlfriends computer has a hell of a time working with ATI cards too, how odd. Thanks for the info guys and gals!

-D

Nope. Not losing video signal anymore because I ditched the ATI and bought a Hercules Prophet.

Installed with much niceness and no meanness at all. Hell, in the installation instructions it went seriously step by step on how to totally get rid of the old vid card. Me likee.

Also came with Theif II. I love the thief games.

Krets, you've finally bought the real graphic card (just as I suggested )!