Problems with Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb

[pjvitalogy]

Hey guys, I'm stumped and would really appreciate any suggestions that you might have.

I have a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb card that started to give me some bad artifacting while playing Morrowind a few months ago. We moved and I haven't played in a while so I didn't worry about it. My motherboard (Epox 8RDA+) went bad about a month ago and I replaced it with the latest version (Epox 8RDA+ Pro). But my computer freezes when I play any games. Command and Conquer: Generals, LOTR: The Battle For Middle Earth, Etc,. It also had problems with ATITool. It will lock up or I'll get the blue screen of death when I try the 3D rendering. It won't stay on there long enough for me to read the whole thing so I really don't know if I could figure it out from that. I have installed all the latest drivers and disabled the onboard sound in the bios. Fastwrite is off as well. Basically, I can't find anything that is wrong. I even flashed the Video Card's Bios with the most recent one from your site. Any suggestions?

Ian

Motherboard: Epox 8RDA3IPRO
Memory: 3x256 Corsair PC2700
Vid: Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb Samsung mem
Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Gamer 5.1
CPU: Athlon XP Barton 2500+
HD: WD 120gb Caviar ED + WD 80gb Caviar ED Storage

 

[djbbenn]

So I take it you did not do any overclocking. Did this just start to happen all of a sudden? Or is it after you changed you mobo? Is your card getting hot? Sounds like its unstable, or you have to configure your bios.

-Dan

 

[pjvitalogy]

No overclocking. I tried a while back with ATITool but it didn't like that at all. It looks like it's at 378 (gpu) and 338 (mem). The locking up thing seems to have just started. I don't know about the temp, and I'm pretty sure that it was doing this before I changed out the mobo. Is there some way I can save my bios settings and show them to you?

 

[djbbenn]

First try deleting all of your ATI drivers, then getting the new ones. Try this program to get rid of all ati programs. Then get the new drivers. If it doesn't work check your bios settings, like agp voltage and that your settings are default.

-Dan

 

[INSTG8R]

Dan that proggy is the same one built into the Cats anyway I would suggest using Driver Cleaner Pro which you can get Here Install this and run the Live Update then uninstall the ATI Drivers using the Uninstall utility in Add/Remove Programs(the same as Dan pointed you too) then reboot in Safe Mode (press F8 at Startup) then remove all ATI drivers using the Multiple Filter then reboot and try reinstalling. you might also wanna try the Cab cleaner which is found under Tools in DC Pro

 

[djbbenn]

Is it...opps my bad. I think I was thinking of drivercleaner but I went to the ATI sent...ha. Thanks INSTG8R.

-Dan

 

[pjvitalogy]

Thanks. I'll give this a try and let you know how it turns out.

 

[pjvitalogy]

That seems to have made things worse. I can't increase the resolution. 800x600 is all I can get. It locks up when I try to get a higher res. ATITool locks it up after about 5 seconds. I cleaned all my drivers: Mobo, Audio and Video. Reinstalled everything and now I'm worse than when I started. What now?

 

[djbbenn]

You may have to format your computer then. If it is software related, a format will fix it. Can you try the card in another computer to see if it is the card, or if its software related?

-Dan

 

[pjvitalogy]

Dang, that sucks. I was afraid of that. Thank goodness I have a large backup. Thanks. Anyone know how I can save my passwords?

 

[djbbenn]

You may not have to format, but if its software related it will be the easiest way to fix it. But if its hardware a format will not do it. When you say save your passwords, which ones do you mean? Your xp ones?

-Dan

 

[pjvitalogy]

Yeah, you know the ones that windows asks you to save. Is there a file somwhere where those are saved so I can save them in a word document or something?

 

[djbbenn]

I have never tried to save my xp passwords before, but I know the file in which they are stored is SAM. Its in the sytem 32 directory. But you can't seem to touch that file where its in use. If you have encrypted files you should be able to just put them back on your sytem after being formatted and put you passwords back in. Sorry for not being much help, I never tried it before...not yet.

-Dan

 

[pjvitalogy]

Yeah, the problem is that I don't remember all my passwords and I never wrote them all down anywhere.

 

[djbbenn]

O well that could cause a problem...What are some of these for then? Besides the XP ones.

-Dan