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NEED HELP- XP boots to garbled screen on cold boots

408 Views 12 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  Karyk, 
B
Hi guys,


My system:

MB: Soyo p4vte

CPU: 2.53GHz Celeron

Mem: 1GB DDR

GPU: Celestica Radeon 9600SE 128MB AGP 8X

Display: Benq FP731 17" LCD

OS: XP Pro


Problem:


Upon every COLD boots, XP loads fine. However, I get a "garbled" (all horizontal+vertical lines, cannot read anything) desktop. Since I can't see anything, I push RESET (reboot). When XP tells me that XP improperly shutdown last time and ask me if I want to boot in SAFE MODE, Last known config, or normally, I can pick any config and it'll start XP fine (no garble this time). This happens on every COLD boot.


I have updated with all the lastest MB drivers (no BIOS upgrade) and graphic drivers, reduced SMARTGART settings (AGP, no fastwrites, etc..), AGP BIOS settings, but the problem still exist.

The weird thing is that, when I used the old version (forgot version) of the Catalyst driver that came with the graphic card, this problem does not exist (boots to desktop fine).


PLEASE help. My wife is really getting on my case about this problem.


Thanks guys
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A
Almost sounds like a problem with the video driver. Can you cold boot w/o issues into safe mode?


I would try to uninstall the video driver (w/ driver cleaner) and either reinstall it or use an older, official driver and not the very latest.

____

Axel
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J
Simple question, but have you tried reseating your card? You'd be amazed as to how many times I've seen this problem crop up (especially on HTPCs for some reason, maybe because 99% are home built?).


In fact, I had the same problem when I removed the HSF from my 9700Pro and attached a Zalman ZM80C-HP and CNPS-7000AlCu to my system last week. I was all ready to disassemble the whole kaboodle, when I just decided to reseat the card, and VOILA, it worked fine. Which is good, cause it took me about an hour and a half to assemble that GPU HSF the first time...


Sometimes weird stuff happens...


Hope that helps,


Cheers.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jhhoffma
Simple question, but have you tried reseating your card? You'd be amazed as to how many times I've seen this problem crop up (especially on HTPCs for some reason, maybe because 99% are home built?).

Cheers.
I've tried reinstalling the card once and it didn't help. I think there's some connection with the Catalyst driver because using an old version does not cause this problem.

I'll try driver-cleaner and reinstall of Catalyst and see if it helps.


BTW, could the power supply have any affect on the graphics card and cause this type of problem?


Thanks for all your inputs.
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I don't think the PSU could cause image distortion without any other symptoms (crashing, rebooting).


Driver-cleaner is definitely a good idea. When changing video cards, always uninstall the old drivers before changing cards. Both ATI and Nvidia allow this through the Add/Remove Programs utility in the Control Panel. This is the easiest and most complete way to remove old drivers so they do not conflict with new cards. Then you can try 3rd party apps to remove anything else that may be left over, if you still have problems.
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G
You might also try some sort of registry cleaner, to clear out any dead wood in there.
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K
I sounds somewhat similar to the hardware issue I had with an ATI card. The difference was it booted properly, but Windows did not recognize the type of card, so it would boot to a base resolution of 640x480, which required a reboot and then readjusting the resolution.


My solution was to put a pause command in an autoexec.bat file (something you'd need to create) and then reboot (Ctrl-Alt-Del) the first time it hit the pause, and then allow it to proceed the second time. Near as I could determine, it was like the bios for the video card wasn't ready by the time the computer booted into Windows.


Anyway, that solution sucked for an HTPC, so I ended up buying another card.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Karyk
I sounds somewhat similar to the hardware issue I had with an ATI card. ....
Hmmm... beocop mentioned that he did not have this issue with an older driver - This sounds more like a driver or s/w than a h/w issue to me.


_____

Axel
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Quote:
Originally posted by beocop
The weird thing is that, when I used the old version (forgot version) of the Catalyst driver that came with the graphic card, this problem does not exist (boots to desktop fine).
Axel, if this is what you're referring to, I found this ambiguous. I didn't take it to mean he can load that software now, but that the card worked well in the past. My card had worked at some point too! ;)


Anyway, my reboot once thing is fairly easy to try--it will either work or it won't.
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B
I was having this exact same problem. It turned out that the +5v

from the PSU was running low. i replaced the PSU and all was fine.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bryston
I was having this exact same problem. It turned out that the +5v

from the PSU was running low. i replaced the PSU and all was fine.
Can you explain more? This card does not use a separate power connector from the power supply. It is powered directly from the motherboard. If it's a power supply problem, how can I check if the power supply is bad/low? Is there a software monitor that will indicate what voltage the card is getting or do you have to use a multimeter and check the power supply output?
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Quote:
Originally posted by Karyk
Axel, if this is what you're referring to, I found this ambiguous. I didn't take it to mean he can load that software now, but that the card worked well in the past. My card had worked at some point too! ;)


Anyway, my reboot once thing is fairly easy to try--it will either work or it won't.
The problem only exist after I load new Catalyst drivers. If I reload the old drivers that come with the card, the problem does not exist.
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Quote:
Originally posted by beocop
The problem only exist after I load new Catalyst drivers. If I reload the old drivers that come with the card, the problem does not exist.
Is there some reason you feel you need to upgrade? If so, have you tried a different version that is perhaps a month or two old? ATI releases drivers every month, so they are often buggy. I haven't upgraded for about a year now, because I figure my HTPC is working now, and if I download a new driver it's likely to have some new problem.
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