Buggy AGP output?? - SOLVED BY XP REINSTALL

[Ummon]

I have this PIII with XP on it. I have an Nvidia MX440 with some kind of issues that I thought I fixed with some other drivers, but yesterday after not turning it on for a while, it got all through the bios screens and then in Windows it seemed to be some weird kind of refresh that none of my CRT monitors would pick up, and they go into stand-by.

Okay, put in a different card. This worked. But today in trying to resurrect the Nvidia card, now NO AGP cards (old or not so old ATI or Nvidia) will display a picture in Windows. BUT, the monitor doesn't go into stand-by - the light stays green, and the OSD says 640x480. Windows doesn't do 640x480 by default, right? Maybe there's some glitch in that?

I know Windows loads because I can hear the Windows 'welcome' sound. And I can shut it down from the keyboard, blind. Of course I tried to access other things this way, but I was just thumbing in the dark.

The integrated video works fine. But whether using external video or on-board, it won't go into safe mode. It gets stuck in some scrolling dos-like screen at a line that ends in "Windows\system32\drivers\agp440.sys".

[ahofle]

LOL I just went through this exact thing.  I think the solution was to install a similar chipset card and drivers and then shut down, install the 'bad' card, and reboot.

[Space Fractal]

This might been becaues the graphics is not loaded in, hence S-VHS dosent work in Safe Mode?

If you can get network to work, you might want to use a Virtual Desktop instead and control it from a another machine.

Did you try to uninstall all video drivers, before inserting the AGP card and install the proper driver? They might need a update.

Please correct me, if I misforstood you.

[Ummon]

S-VHS? Not sure where you got that. I had deleted all third party drivers before re-trying the problematic card. I also did a defrag with the drive almost full - maybe that screwed things up?

I tried the virtual desktop thing, but it wouldn't recognize my other computers on the network as 'users'. Never mind that when I clicked on 'my network places', it showed them all there. ?

So, I tried an XP repair. CHKDSK said the volume looked fine. I forced CHKDSK and it says there are one or more unrecoverable problems. Does this mean I'm screwed?

[Space Fractal]

Hey, you chase me. I have just readed you have used the S-VHS output from your graphicscard. But you just using a AGP and have a onboard graphiscard?

You might try to disable the onboard graphicscard in the bios, since some boards might give troubles when a other card is installed and the onboard is not disabled. These can sometimes give conflicts.

Oterwhice a defrag should not cause that, but a bad harddrive with bad sectors can.

It might even been a bad ram, which you can test it with a bootable memtest utility.

[Ummon]

I forgot '/r' at the end of 'chkdsk /p would fix any errors. And it did, but this doesn't seem to have fixed this issue. I should've know. I was using an AGP card, but it was an old Trident T64 (or supposed to be - I'm not sure, now) and THAT did display Windows (I'm guessing using some built-in stock vga driver or something, because I can't find any drivers that work in XP or win98). But nothing else will. Mondo bizarro.

[Ummon]

So, yeah, I went the hard way. At least it works now.