AGP Failure?
 

Hi,

Soltek SL-75FRV
Athlon XP2000
GeForce Ti-4200
2xHDD
1xDVD+/-RW

My box has been switched on permanently for nearly four months. I've been
away on holiday for a week and decided to power off.

On my return I turned the box on but there was no signal to the monitor. The
disks were spinning but I couldn't see anything. I wiggled a few cables etc
before deciding to fit an old Riva TNT2 AGP card. This worked fine.

Ahah! The 4200 must be knackered - great excuse to buy a 6600GT. No joy -
the GT at least allowed me a glimpse of the Soltek BIOS splash screen then
it froze.

I tried a GeForce 5200 with the same result. In fact the 4200, 5200 and 6600
all exhibited the same symptoms: at some point between power up and logon
the screen would either freeze, be garbled or not send a signal to the
monitor.

At this point I replaced the power supply (350W).

Still no joy - only the Riva TNT2 card works which is as solid as rock.

I've run out of ideas. Any suggestions?

Martin

Martin wrote:
Hi,

Soltek SL-75FRV
Athlon XP2000
GeForce Ti-4200
2xHDD
1xDVD+/-RW

My box has been switched on permanently for nearly four months. I've been
away on holiday for a week and decided to power off.

On my return I turned the box on but there was no signal to the monitor. The
disks were spinning but I couldn't see anything. I wiggled a few cables etc
before deciding to fit an old Riva TNT2 AGP card. This worked fine.

Ahah! The 4200 must be knackered - great excuse to buy a 6600GT. No joy -
the GT at least allowed me a glimpse of the Soltek BIOS splash screen then
it froze.

I tried a GeForce 5200 with the same result. In fact the 4200, 5200 and 6600
all exhibited the same symptoms: at some point between power up and logon
the screen would either freeze, be garbled or not send a signal to the
monitor.

At this point I replaced the power supply (350W).

Still no joy - only the Riva TNT2 card works which is as solid as rock.

I've run out of ideas. Any suggestions?

Martin



Try popping the CMOS battery for about 2 days. That'll drain the system
completely. Listen for any beepcodes on startup. It could be RAM, the
microcode on your CPU (pre-boot code), or a blown board component (caps,
mosfets, chipset component).

Tried this but no joy. Box Ok with TNT2 card but 4200, 5200, 6600 all fail.

I'd thought about the RAM but discounted it as the box runs fine with the
TNT2 card.

Is it a motherboard swap next, then?

"Martin" wrote in message

Tried this but no joy. Box Ok with TNT2 card but 4200, 5200, 6600 all
fail.
I'd thought about the RAM but discounted it as the box runs fine with
the TNT2 card.

Is it a motherboard swap next, then?

The TnT2 card is running at AGP 1X2X-3.3v
The other cards run at either 1.5v or .9v, or 2X4X8X
The 4200 should run at 3.3v

Can you get a picture with the 4200 in long enough to get into BIOS?
Since that's the card you had in the first place, it should be working.
Might be the power regulator for the AGP bus is going south.

I can get to the BIOS if I use the TNT2 card - all the others now barf at
the BIOS splash screen.

Incidentally, I tried to burn a DVD this weekend using NERO. All attempts
have failed - the burn succeeds but during the verify the box restarts.

I've used three different media - all with the same result.

Could it be my 512Mb RAM stick that's going bye bye?


"McGrandpa" wrote in message
...
"Martin" wrote in message

Tried this but no joy. Box Ok with TNT2 card but 4200, 5200, 6600 all
fail.
I'd thought about the RAM but discounted it as the box runs fine with
the TNT2 card.

Is it a motherboard swap next, then?

The TnT2 card is running at AGP 1X2X-3.3v
The other cards run at either 1.5v or .9v, or 2X4X8X
The 4200 should run at 3.3v

Can you get a picture with the 4200 in long enough to get into BIOS? Since
that's the card you had in the first place, it should be working. Might be
the power regulator for the AGP bus is going south.

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:12:45 -0000, "Martin"
wrote:

I can get to the BIOS if I use the TNT2 card - all the others now barf at
the BIOS splash screen.

Incidentally, I tried to burn a DVD this weekend using NERO. All attempts
have failed - the burn succeeds but during the verify the box restarts.

I've used three different media - all with the same result.

Could it be my 512Mb RAM stick that's going bye bye?

Maybe. Download memtest86 or memtest86+ and run it overnight.

http://www.memtest86.com/

http://www.memtest.org/

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

Useful link. Thanks.

When I run memtest I get what looks like a register dump and both floppy and
hard drive lights stay on permanently. I certainly don't get anything like
the screenshots on the memtest website.

I'll try it again this evening on my other working box but this makes me
suspect the memory stick further.

"Rich Webb" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:12:45 -0000, "Martin"
wrote:

I can get to the BIOS if I use the TNT2 card - all the others now barf at
the BIOS splash screen.

Incidentally, I tried to burn a DVD this weekend using NERO. All attempts
have failed - the burn succeeds but during the verify the box restarts.

I've used three different media - all with the same result.

Could it be my 512Mb RAM stick that's going bye bye?

Maybe. Download memtest86 or memtest86+ and run it overnight.

http://www.memtest86.com/

http://www.memtest.org/

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 07:55:55 -0000, "Martin"
wrote:

Useful link. Thanks.

When I run memtest I get what looks like a register dump and both floppy and
hard drive lights stay on permanently. I certainly don't get anything like
the screenshots on the memtest website.

I've occasionally seen what looks like a couple of register addresses on
the default vid screen (black background, white characters) just before
the main app starts up (blue background, white characters). I think at
that stage it's probing the system to see what it has to work with.

If your BIOS supports it, run your CPU & memory at the lowest available
clock speeds and most conservative memory clocking and try running
memtest again (and perhaps also try creating the runtime floppy on a
different system).

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

I finally got memtest to run. It's now run for 18 hours without a single
error which rules out the memory stick.

The box is now suffering from hard disk problems - during boot up the drive
light comes on for 30 secs or so before beginning the boot sequence and
occasionally during normal operation (e.g opening IE) the machine freezes
for 30 secs or so before running the program.

This is driving me nuts - any other suggestions would be greatly
appreciated.


"Rich Webb" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:12:45 -0000, "Martin"
wrote:

I can get to the BIOS if I use the TNT2 card - all the others now barf at
the BIOS splash screen.

Incidentally, I tried to burn a DVD this weekend using NERO. All attempts
have failed - the burn succeeds but during the verify the box restarts.

I've used three different media - all with the same result.

Could it be my 512Mb RAM stick that's going bye bye?

Maybe. Download memtest86 or memtest86+ and run it overnight.

http://www.memtest86.com/

http://www.memtest.org/

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

You did not say what you did to get memtest running ok. Try another power
supply. Maybe the hard disk is going out. What motherboard chipset driver
version are you running?

DaveL


"Martin" wrote in message
...
I finally got memtest to run. It's now run for 18 hours without a single
error which rules out the memory stick.

The box is now suffering from hard disk problems - during boot up the
drive light comes on for 30 secs or so before beginning the boot sequence
and occasionally during normal operation (e.g opening IE) the machine
freezes for 30 secs or so before running the program.

This is driving me nuts - any other suggestions would be greatly
appreciated.


"Rich Webb" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:12:45 -0000, "Martin"
wrote:

I can get to the BIOS if I use the TNT2 card - all the others now barf at
the BIOS splash screen.

Incidentally, I tried to burn a DVD this weekend using NERO. All attempts
have failed - the burn succeeds but during the verify the box restarts.

I've used three different media - all with the same result.

Could it be my 512Mb RAM stick that's going bye bye?

Maybe. Download memtest86 or memtest86+ and run it overnight.

http://www.memtest86.com/

http://www.memtest.org/

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA