[CThornburgh]

Arghhhhh.


After weeks of trouble-free operation, my HTPC is now completely useless!


Here's what happened. I retired the Radeon 8500 until gamma is fixed by buying a 7500 (powered by ATI). Installed it fairly easily with the included drivers and it was basically working fine, but I was having minor troubles with TTek and HiPix. So after some research on the forum I saw that the 6025 drivers were the most stable for Win2k, so I decided to install them to see if that solved the problem. Upon installing the drivers and re booting, I got a garbled screen (technical term). So, I reset, booted in safe mode, uninstalled, and tried again with the same result. Several more similar attempts were followed by my trying the original drivers again, as well as several other versions, all with the same result. More research on AVS suggested that perhaps I should boot to Safe Mode immediately after install and set the color depth and resolution as low as possible, but I'm not sure how to make it stick--safe mode is obviously 16 colors and 6x4...rebooting after playing with that always gave me the same result. BTW, when the screen is garbled, the pj is seeing 31.5k x 59.9k...obviously fully in range and totally standard.


Here's where it gets really weird:

The next thing I did (after uninstalling every app I had so painfully got working) was a complete re-install of win2k, Blew everything away and rebuilt from the ground up...installed only ActiveX8.1 and then the radeon drivers and had the same result!! I've now rebuilt 3 times, reseated the 7500, and done everything else I could think of to no avail. When I try to install the drivers directly from the wizard (rather than going through the ATI CD or self-launching install), the screen turns into red green and blue stripes as soon as the drivers are installed.


I am truly desperate...I have some friends coming over to watch a movie and they will mock me mercilessly should my expensive and time-consuming theater not be up and running;-).


ANY IDEAS???


System is: TBird 1.33, Asus Mobo, 256MB, Win2k, Radeon 7500, MAudio 24/96, Pstrip, HiPix. Display is Ehome 9501LC fed through Extron 202xi.


Thanks!


Charles

 

[Kei Clark]

Charles,


I had a similar problem with the video drivers when it installed in the 640x480 at 16-bit mode, but if I went from the 640x480 to 800x600 first before changing the color bits, the picture was just fine. It drove me crazy for a few boots, it's possible that there are strange bugs in the Radeon drivers.


Kei Clark

Digital Connection

 

[CThornburgh]

Kei,


So after the install you booted in safemode and switched the display res from 640x480 to 800x600, then left it that way on the reboot? Or did you just switch it to 800x600 then switch it back before rebooting? Also, I don't have any other options for color depth in safe mode...only 16 colors. Did you have choices?


Thanks


Charles

 

[CThornburgh]

So I checked leaving it both 480x640 and 800x600...the machine does seem to be booting in those resolutions based on the frequency the PJ is seeing, but the screen is still showing up garbled. Does these sound like a color depth issue? If the machine boots and displays in safe mode for both of these resolutions, what is it doing differently when it boots in regular mode at the same res? If it is color depth, how do I change that in safe mode so that it will come up differently on the next boot?


Thanks again,



Charles

 

[Gary Lightfoot]

You could try the 8500 back in the htpc just to make sure everything else is working OK, although that may just prove that the card is playing up with the drivers.


Did you do a complete reformat with board drivers including agp? If so the fault can't be any legacy driver issues.


It seems odd that it was working fine and now it isn't, so I'm wondering if it's a hardware problem - the card may have gone faulty..


Gary.

 

[pivot]

Aahhhhhhh! Don't you just hate it? I have the same problem sometimes. Although I run my HTPC on linux, andf frequently upgrade the dvd player, soundcard drivers etc.. My most nagging problem just now however is that my AP2496 doesn't give me lipsync, neither under windows or linux. It simply seems to use too short a buffer, so the picture is somewhat delayed after the sound.

 

[CThornburgh]

Gary,


I think you're right...I reinstalled my Radeon VE (predecessor to the 7500 and 8500 in my system), and everything seems to be fine. Haven't reinstalled HiPix or TTek yet, so we'll see. But it cerainly looks like the card went faulty


One of the reasons I went away from VE was I have been unable to get it to accept some resolutions--specifically the [email protected] I was using. I can set it up and it says its accepted the res but when I accept (in Pstrip) the screen doesn't respond--it merely stay at the reslution it was at before.


Any idea how to get past this problem?


Thanks again,


Charles

 

[Gary Lightfoot]

Hmmmm,


I've a similar prob with my other pc - 3rd party Radeon VE and XP.


I can change refresh rates no problem and they're accepted using the XP drivers that come with the OS.


Install the XP drivers from the Supergrace website which are for the card so I could get the extra tabs and functionality, and now it doesn't accept refresh rate changes - like your resolution problem, it accepts them and the screen 'collapses and reflates' but there's no tell tale 'click' from the monitor which denotes a refresh change. It seems to be stuck at 60hz regardless of resolution..


I'm back on the original XP drivers and I can again change refresh rates no problem. Strange things these ATI cards huh?


Gary.

 

[CThornburgh]

Strange and frustrating!!


I had my display dialed for that resolution, and now can't get back....so I get to either waste a bunch of time dialing in a new res that I'll dump as soon as I can solve my card problems, or dealing with a bad setup tonight.



Fun hobby, huh?

 

[Delicious2]

Whats a Moive? Is it a color like Aqua or Chartreuse?

 

[CThornburgh]

Oh good...typo humor is just what I was looking for now.


Thanks for the help, Delicious.

 

[Delicious2]

 Anytime.

Sorry, couldn't resist....'suppose I wouldn't be so amused if my Radeon 64MB DDR were to suddenly quit. You have my sympathys.


Have you considered using your backup progressive scan DVD player for tonite's moive?



Mark H

 

[CThornburgh]

The great ones don't walk the wire with a net...those foolish enough to think they're great suffer the consequences!!


No net for me...sold the DVD player long ago. I do have the machine up and running again(on an old VC), but can't get the resolution I need. I am still holding out hope for a last minute savior on this problem with VE not displaying resolutions it claims to have accepted.


I promise I'll laugh next time, as long as I haven't just spent a weekend in my basement cursing the PC.

 

[Kon]

Every HTPC owner should use Norton Ghost. Get all the apps configured, then ghost the sucker to a bootable CD. Makes recovery extremely simple (no-one likes pulling the PC out when its time to reconfig).


Just my 2c.

 

[paul13usa]

I know hind sight ain't fore sight by a damn sight.,but do yourself a favor and install ROXIO'S GOBACK saved my butt a least 100 times.If you change something and it dosen't work you just revert back in time with a click of a button.It's a great product when your playing with your computer all the time. Probally haven't helped with a hardware problem ,but with software or drivers you can't beat it

 

[CThornburgh]

Thanks for the recovery suggestions...can you guys provide any additional infon on these apps (price, link, etc)?


Cheers


Charles