I recently purchased a new ati radeon x800 xl (pci-e) , to go with my abit ax8 mb, 1gb pc3200 ram (matched 512mb x 2) and 3500+ amd winchester cpu. I have win xp with service pack 2 and all the most updated drivers for EVERYTHING, and the newest bios for the mb. Everything is great until I load the ati video drivers. Then it locks up after windows starts and says there are ati driver errors. When I restart it says there are no video drivers loaded. It has also given an error message a few times that the the "ati VPU has stopped responding to commands and has been reset"?!? With no video drivers installed the pc runs fine, other then 800x600 resolution :( Do you have any advice for me on what to do? I called ati tech support but after about 15 minutes, the guy I was talking to (I thought I was talking to a tech) said I needed to talk to a "tech" and put me back on hold so long I had to hang up. I have built many pc's and I went through every possible troubleshooting scenario. I even reinstalled xp with just service pack 1, still same problems. Every part in the pc has been tested in another pc, one piece at a time. Please help, I want this card to work because the similar performing geforce card is $100 more.

Run Windows XP Upgrade Advisor to see what it reports
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/advisor.mspx

I seem to have the same problem as bigaaron.
I just bought a new computer:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor
MSI RS480M2-IL motherboard
Ati Radeon X800 XL 256MB videocard
DIMM 2x 512MB PC-3200 DDR400 RAM
Windows XP SP2

It worked fine for a few days but then I started getting the same "ati VPU has stopped responding to commands and has been reset" messages whenever I tried running 3D graphics with hardware acceleration. I've tried installing all kinds of new drivers, but it doesn't work. What to do?

Weirdness...I too just bought the x800xl, installed into a Tyan s2892, and upon boot, stopped the Windows "New Hardware Found" wizard. I tried to install the Catalyst 5.7 from the web. Didn't work quite right, complaining that there are no ATI cards installed? I rebooted and this time let it go online to find drivers, and it did! Tried installing the Catalyst again, and this time is started to take, but still had further trouble, as well as stuff not loading on the next boot(CLI - assuming the control center). Then read the web page again...must have Microsoft .NET Framework installed first. :rolleyes:

Down'd the Cat Uninstaller and tried that, but even that likes the .NET Framwork installed too. So...I installed NET Framework, used the Uninstaller, rebooted, allowed the Windows stuff to detect and install the X800 video card, then installed the full Catalyst.

What a pain. I've yet to go through the whole thing to make sure the Control Center works, but so far, everything else seems fine. Bumpiest ride I've had ever installing an ATI card.

Hmmm... needs .NET, huh? Odd, but I guess I can see that. I never ran into that problem, however, because I keep my Windows up-to-date. Strange...

I think I traced my problem to overheating. The fan stops spinning after a few minutes of gameplay, and the card just heats up until it's burning hot. When it's almost too hot to touch, the picture freezes and I get the "VPU recovery has reset the graphics accelerator blah blah..." What could prevent the fan from spinning?

What could prevent the fan from spinning?Broken fan and/or sensor. Get that vid card replaced.