connect3d radeon 9550 256MB problem

[samorost]

hello. i sit here, broken-hearted. tried everything but it only farted.

i bought about 6 months ago a connect3d radeon 9550 256MB. yes i know, it was cheap ($70ish). and ever since i bought it, i've been having major problems. i'm gonna try to be as specific as i can.

first of all, here are my system specs:

amd athlon64 3000+
512mb 400mhz kingston ram
200gb hard disk
msi k8m800 motherboard
dvd burner on one bay, cd burner on the other
winxp pro (no sp2)

when i first installed the video card, the drivers that came with it didn't quite work. i downloaded newer ones (this was in december), and after about 3 days of trying to get it to work, all i got was sudden system freezes and then messages saying that my VPU crashed and had been restored. i couldn't change my resolution because whenever i would access the display properties from the control panel (or right-clicking on the desktop), one of window's system DLL's (i believe it was run32.dll) would crash.

i contacted ati at this point, and they weren't very helpful. all they said was i should get the newest drivers for my motherboard. i didn't do it, instead i went to the beach for a week, and when i came back, it didn't crash again and i was able to use it normally.

now, it seemed to work. i use my computer mainly for making music (DAW - digital audio workstation). i would experience some strange crashes when using fruityloops. the system would freeze, the display would stop working (the green light on my monitor would turn yellow and it would do that sound it does when it changes from one resolution to the other). sometimes, i was lucky, and i would get the VPU crash message, close it, save my work and restart. other times, i wouldn't get this message, the computer just rebooted.

this was annoying, but i kept saving at all times to avoid losing data. unfortunately, i did lose a WHOLE track i had been working on for about a month, and this made me go insane.

gaming, i would have no problem whatsoever. the card seemed to work fine. splinter cell and quake3 worked just fine, i could reach good resolution levels with good responses. i figured, since the computer doesn't freeze in splinter cell with all this video processing, then maybe the problem is in fruityloops. until it did. it started freezing on splinter cell. same behaviour, display goes to hell and i'm forced to reboot.

now, a couple days ago i downloaded and installed the new catalyst 5.5 drivers, thinking hopefully this might fix my gaming problem AND, please please, my music making problem.

bad idea. the drivers would install just fine, but when rebooting, it would load windows in a garbled display, and i couldn't even move the mouse to blindly change the display to try to fix it. i uninstalled the video drivers. then i installed the ones that came with my video card, and no. didn't work either. i tried with a version i downloaded at some point, which is between the one that came with my video card and the 5.5... no luck.

i figured i would try installing new drivers for my motherboard. i did this, and re-installed catalyst 5.5. upon rebooting, it went into windows at a 800x600 video display mode, but it looked rather strange. like interlaced or something. after less than a minute, everything would aggressively freeze. i can tell it's a hardware-related problem: mouse doesn't move. num lock doesn't turn off. and of course, any keyboard input is futile.

i spent about a day or so running my computer without any display drivers installed. of course, it works fine, but it's like not having my video card. i can't play any game that needs openGL. duh. and the display sucks, whenever i move windows around, the refresh rate is slow and stupid.

i went to connect3d.com for the millionth time this week, and noticed something about .net framework 1.1. it needed to be installed before the drivers. i hadn't seen that. happy, i download the .net framework, and re-download the 5.5 catalyst driver from connect3d.com, hoping it'll work this time.

the installation went fine, but no. windows loaded at 800x600, my display was kind of displaced from my monitor, interlaced-like graphics, and the sudden freeze after a few seconds.

i'm so mad and desperate. right now i'm in safe mode...

i tried everything i could think of, looked for FAQs, related problems in this forum and other forums, but found nothing.

---

now, something interesting i can see with safe mode is, that it seems like my drivers don't work at all. when i go to display properties > settings > advanced > adapter, nothing comes up on "adapter style", or information. i click on properties, vgasave properties show up, and on the resource tab where are listed the conflicts, if any, i get the following conflicts:

I/O Range: 03B0 - 03BB used by VIA CPU to AGP2.0 controller
I/O Range: 03C0 - 03DF used by VIA CPU to AGP2.0 controller
Memory Range: 000A0000 - 000BFFFF used by VIA CPU to AGP2.0 controller

of course, bringing up the windows troubleshooter is a load of nonsense.

apparently, my video card isn't listed in the windows HCL (hardware compatibility list), but it was working before!

seriously, i've tried everything i can think of, including taking the video card out, checking the AGP slot for dust, putting it back in (i even did this with love)... and nothing.

am i facing the horrible possibility that my video card is just bad from factory? or is there something i'm skipping?

i would gladly appreciate any help

 

[gerrynicol]

Can you copy/ paste your IRQ list pls, cheers.

Start->programs->accessories->system tools->system info
go into hardware resources the click on IRQ

copy and paste the info in here.

I'm thinking you may have a conflict.

oh and can you list your power supply with volts and amps(should be on the supply)

Cheers,

Gerry.

 

[samorost]

thank you for your input

here's my irq list:

as you can see, it looks fine. i uninstalled the driver again, since i just can't boot into windows properly. also, in safe mode, my driver doesn't appear on display properties > settings > advanced > adapter... that is, it doesn't show up, whether it is or not installed.

also, i checked the conflicts/sharing resources part of system information, and this is what i see:

here are my PSU specs:

VIOMAX atx power supply
400W max

max volt: +3.3V, +5V, +12V, -12V, -5V, -5Vbs
max (A) : 22A, 32A, 13A, 0.8A, 0.5A, 2A

i hope this can help. thank you

 

[gerrynicol]

Because you don't have your driver installed I have to take it that your display is on 11.
hmm does look ok as you say, hmm,
What make is you power supply(please do not say Q-tec)

Your conflicts/ sharing "looks" ok, but as I say without the drivers being installed hard to tell.


Can you list full sys specs.

Gerry.

 

[samorost]

what other sys specs do you need? also, i don't think the power supply is giving me the problem. theoretically i could try unplugging both my cd drives to try, but i doubt that would help

 

[gerrynicol]

Im just trying to figure out what you have in your system, I don't think it is a power issue but you never know!.
also what os are you running?.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Have you installed the latest hyperion drivers?

 

[samorost]

amd athlon64 3000+
512mb 400mhz kingston ram
200gb hard disk
msi k8m800 motherboard
dvd burner on one bay, cd burner on the other
winxp pro (no sp2)


--------------
what are hyperion drivers and where can i find them?

 

[Deleted member 3]

they're via's chipset drivers. find them on via's site or just google for them.

 

[samorost]

no... none of the driver updates (hyperion, catalyst, motherboard, etc) worked...

the WEIRD part is this stupid video card was working JUST FINE before trying to update the drivers! so no, it's not possible that the video card is bad... is it?

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Could be the remains of older drivers. Have you tried using driver cleaner?
You can't rule out a video card problem until you try your 9660 in another PC. Or you could try another card in your PC. Only other thing I can think of to try would be to try lowering your AGP speed, checking that fast-write and any other special settings in you motherboard are disabled and as a last thing try to download the older catalysts from somewhere and try those again. Also have a try with the omega drivers if you haven't yet.

 

[samorost]

i did lower the AGP speed and it didn't do anything. i'll look for the omega drivers. thank you.

i'll post the outcome of this experiment soon

 

[DoomLord]

I posted this about a week ago, I had all sort of similar and worst problems with my connect 3D 9550 256 mb radeon..

the solution in my case was to flash the video card bios with the one that's on this site (same manofacturer, same card)

after that no more problems...

if you don't want to flash it, go to the store you got it and ask for a new one, you got a faulty one.

 

[samorost]

well, there doesn't seem to be any kind of better solution. thanks. i'm gonna try that

 

[DoomLord]

About the rest of the anwers..

I tried that ALL and more... even the card worked fine on this very computer but using Linux, the video card worked fine on a different computer also (much older anyways).

yes, most of the times, drivers, agp settings, etc does help.. normally when you have a normal Video Card..

it seems to me that samorost has the same problem I did, and there is no way that "normal" procedures helps when your video card bios is the problem.

samorost, read carefully the procedure about flashing your video card bios.. it's pretty easy and it takes about 2 minutes to be done, but if for any reason it doesn't work as it should be prepared and do as the tutorial says.

Good Luck!

 

[ZZfoxELITE]

My friend recently had a similar problem, i think, when we put this exact same card in his pc... The drivers on the included driver disc would run the card fine, but once he upgraded to catalyst, his pc would play all sorts of tricks, resulting in him having to boot to safe mode to uninstall the catalyst drivers every time. BTW, When you run in safe mode, the drivers will not show up, as they are disabled, so that you can do some proper messing about with your system.
Anyway, we evenbtually took the card back, and thay confirmed it was faulty, and upon buying another brand, it was fine.

Hope this helps, might just be rambling about a completely unrelated incident though.

 

[thekillerbean]

I've had major problems with my Gigabyte Radeon 9550 as well, but my problem were with the Catalyst drivers I believe. I managed to find a driver set somewhere that did not have the .NET nor the Catalyst addins, but I also had to use driver clean to clear old drivers.

I'm always afraid to flash the BIOS as if something goes wrong (power glitch for instance) , then you are SOL as they may not accept the card for replacement at the point of purchase!

FYI: I'm using drivers that extracted themselves into the following folder:
wxp-w2k-catalyst-8-082-041130a-019577c