Power Supply Problems???

[campco1]

Does anyone know if power supply fluctuations can cause blue screen gpf's? I have reformatted (even repartitioned HD)and reloaded WIN98 SE with only the video card still in the machine and immediately upon restarting got a blue screen gpf which says it was in the area of VXD and VMM files. It will still continue the boot up process and even get to the desktop and work but is intermittently unstable, going to blue screen warnings for the same.

I have managed to load all of my other cards but the system continues to be unstable. All I can think of is a tech support situation of a couple years ago where the technician with a full on cadre of bench equipment and diagnostic software kept chasing his tail for days until discovering the power supply was bad. I feel the same might be going on here due to the fact it happens immediately after loading the OS with only one board resident. I'm looking for any suggestions or support for my theory before dumping the power supply. It's not that I'm cheap (power supplies being so inexpensive) but even with the system's instability I'm still able to get some of my work out and I'm not anxious to go down a road that may kill all my ability to get it to work??????

[mjc]

Off the top of my head I'd say memory, power supply, heat, and speed are your problems...only one by itself or a combination of them...post some more system specs and we'll try to narrow it down some...

If you have a multimeter check the voltages as you are booting the sytem...if you need a pin out of the connector, post back with what kind and I'll see if I can dig it up.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[Rick]

I would also Look for and Install the latest drivers for the Video card.
Also the latest chipset drivers (MS/Via 4in1 can cause this)
and If installed or enabled the Sound Card settings and drivers.

Don’t trust the win98se drivers for everything

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

[campco1]

Sorry no multimeter. Don't even know what it is. The hardware I'm dealing with is an MSI MB MS-5169 with an AMD 500. All my bios's and drivers are up-to-date. I checked that thoroughly.

My biggest problem has been the video which now since my last posting I have managed to get loaded onto the system and to boot-up into 800 x 600 mode but it's still showing instability. The video card is an older Creative Graphics Blaster TNT (w/all drivers current). The Blaster Control software however, is reporting that I am missing the GART.VXD file and I cannot find it anywhere. I've looked on their website, on the WIN98 CD and I'm totally lost. I beginning to change my mind now and I believe this has all along been a driver problem with this one file missing. Any idea's as to where to find it?

[Reid]

GART.VXD is usually loaded with the chipset drivers. If your chipset is Aladdin, you should be able to find drivers here (http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/support/drivers/drivers_main.htm).

"GART: (Graphics Address Remapping Table)
For accesses to AGP memory, the graphics controller and CPU use a single aperture of several megabytes. But the GART translates these to 4 KByte page addresses in system memory. PCI devices that have access to the AGP memory aperture (for example, for live video capture) also go through the GART.

A lot of people who use non-Intel chipsets experience problems such as crashing because windows 98 and some video card venders install the vgartd.vxd for Intel chipsets yet the the GART vxd needed for non-Intel chipsets is different." http://www.g256.com/features/AGP/AGP.shtml


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reido@my-deja.com

Friends don't let friends install Windows ME



[This message has been edited by Reid (edited 09-28-2001).]

[vantim]

Also check and make sure your fsb is not overclocked. That can cause stability problems. Check your bios and or jumper settings. But I would probably say it's a power supply issue.

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Tim Jones MCSE

[campco1]

Thanks to everyone who contributed their suggestions here and especially the links to the websites for drivers which I would have never found on my own. Status of the moment:

Video is still unstable after downloading latest Creative drivers and double checking on whether all bios (MB and video card) have the latest drivers. System will come up into 800x600 and high color but as I said it's still unstable. Creative has a diagnostic and tweaking tool called "Blaster Control" and in BC it has four levels of diagnostics. It passes smoothly through all but one, the "display" level. Every time I attempt to do a display diagnostic it hangs up the entire computer and requires a hard boot to get out of.

I downloaded the latest ALI chipset drivers to see if the hang-up is the drivers that support the AGP function. I noticed that the Creative drivers dl'd the viagart.vxd driver instead of the one more recently suggested. So I'm off to try these drivers from ALI. Will let you know how it turns out. Until thanks again to everyone who has been trying to lend their assistance on this.

George
So. Calif.

[Reid]

Have you tried switching to Standard VGA mode to see if the problem goes away? It is also a good idea to put your system in Standard VGA mode before loading new drivers (I should have mentioned that before). Here is a video driver troubleshooting link (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/1999110214272339) from Symantec that might help.

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reido@my-deja.com

Friends don't let friends install Windows ME

[This message has been edited by Reid (edited 09-30-2001).]

[campco1]

Standard Mode does work without hanging except when copying a large number of files to any location in "Explorer". It will hang-up then as well even in Standard Mode. It acts like it runs out of memory and just freezes.