graphics cards and ALi problems

[JonYoung]

Hi guys, I hope you can help me, 'cos I'm at my wits end here...
a couple of weeks ago my computer died,I worked out from the beep codes it was the graphics card, and I needed a new one anyway, so I bought myself a nice new S3 Savage4. It installed fine, until I restarted the pc, and ran into a world of hurt, with corrupted graphics, multiple system hangs, the full thing. eventually I got it working just long enough to check the control panel, and found a conflict between my new card and the pci-to-pci bridge on my motherboard (an ALi alladin, 5 or 7 I can't remember).
I went into safe mode and tried everything, checking the different settings on both pieces of hardware (they all conflicted), assigning resources manually (made things worse, although it did eliminate the conflict)... Then I read about irq steering, which should help with this. Turns out it's disabled on my motherboard, and the patch I downloaded to enable it won't run because of 'restrictions in place' on my computer. Plus the provided AGP drivers I have won't install because my windows is too old, despite my old AGP card running fine for years.
What on Earth am I missing?????

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Percussive maintenance, it may not work but it sure feels good...

[rUzz]

Did you disable your graphics card before installing a new one? Check your CMOS settings to see if you have AGP or PCI card selected. Then check for a patch at the manufacturer's web site.(for your version of windows)
Go into safe mode and uninstall it for a fresh start.

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Stay alert, stay alive!

[JonYoung]

Hi, thanks for replying...
Yup, I thoroughly removed, disabled, uninstalled and generally expunged my old graphics card before putting the new one in. As far as I can make out, my creaky old K6-2 motherboard just can't cope with the damn thing. It works fine if I have hardware acceleration turned off and limit myself to 256 colours, anything more than that and the whole system hangs. Do you think I need more memory if I want to power it up properly?

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Percussive maintenance, it may not work but it sure feels good...

[rUzz]

The Savage 4 should have enough memory onboard without pulling resources off you mainboard.

Have you tried inserting it into another PCI slot?

Your graphics card manual should have requirements needed to run the graphics card. If it doesn't return it.
If it does I would contact the manufacturer and raise hell till I got what I wanted.

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Stay alert, stay alive!

[This message has been edited by rUzz (edited 11-29-2000).]

[JonYoung]

You really think changing slots will resolve the problem? Well worth a try I suppose. I would think that it might eliminate the hardware conflict, but does a simple conflict explain why the card works at low res but not high? I'll try it and see what happens....

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Percussive maintenance, it may not work but it sure feels good...

[Paleo Pete]

Yes, changing slots will sometimes make a difference. Also, did you remove the old card from Device Manager in Safe Mode? If not, Boot into Safe Mode and remove ALL graphics cards listed. This will often make a difference as well.

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Soon as I come up with all the answers...they change the questions!!

Computer Information Links

[JonYoung]

Hey Chief,
I'll definitely try changing the slots, but I still don't understand why thecard works well on one setting and not at all on the other. I thought the card must be using more of the conflicting resources on high specs, but now people tell me it shouldn't be using mainboard resources at all???
If it's conflicting, shouldn't there be problems regardless of the colour settings?
I'm sure I removed the card, but I can't remember whether I was in safe mode or not. It's definitely gone now...Does the mode youy use when removing hardware make a difference then?
Confused, but hopeful, thanks for taking an interest guys!

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Percussive maintenance, it may not work but it sure feels good...

[Paleo Pete]

Sometimes it does make a difference, I'm not sure why, but it works that way in some cases. That's why I always advise removing devices from Device Manager in Safe Mode. Then you see all previous devices as well, instead of just the current one in use, which is all you see in normal operating mode.

It may be that the machine has some sort of problem accessing the present device and looks to the old one, which is no longer there, or is for some reason trying to still use its settings...

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Soon as I come up with all the answers...they change the questions!!

Computer Information Links

[JonYoung]

Uh Huh, ok that makes about as much sense as anything computer related ever does. I'll try in safe mode and see if there still is a second grasphics card listed, but I'm fairly sure I've got rid of it. Then again, the first time I checked my machine was trying to use 4 different monitors, so god knows what it gets up to. Incidentally, talking about safe mode, I noticed that when I went into it in order to disable hardware acceleration (so the card would deign to work...) on swithcing back to normal mode the computer would use one level more of hardware accel. than I told it too. I think I must have gremlins...

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Percussive maintenance, it may not work but it sure feels good...