G400 MAX just doesn't work in 98, but does in NT

[Vandal]

Ok, here's my big problem. I got my G400 MAX yesterday in the mail, I was one of the first people in Canada to get a retail board. I uninstalled my Mystique 220 that I was using previously and through in the G400 MAX. I booted, Win98 found the card and I installed the drivers off the CD. Everything looks fine at this point, it asks me to reboot - so I do. Now, when I go back into Win98, right after the Windows98 startup screen... my whole screen turns all funky colours in vertical lines. Just lines, lines and more lines. I can't do anything or go anywhere. I procede into Windows in SafeMode and delete my card from Device Manager and try again. I get the same thing, over and over... these are with the drivers from the CD.
At this point, I said screw Win98.. I'm going to go try NT 4.0 (I have a dual-boot system) anyways, everything works perfectly fine.. I installed PowerDesk and all the drivers, it all works. I played a little Quake2 at 1024x768 with Defaul OpenGL and it all works. After this, I figured hey.. Matrox has new drivers (5.13).. I'll go get them. I download the 4.3meg Win98 driver in NT and then reboot, install the new drivers in 98. The same thing.. vertical lines of all different colours. I played with all my BIOS settings and it didn't change anything.
I have no idea what the problem would be... I even physically took out every other card in my computer and just ran my computer with only the G400 MAX. And I only got lines.
I hope someone can help me, I havn't called Matrox yet... all those help lines suck.

Here is everything I have in my computer.
FIC VA-503+ Motherboard (Super 7)
AMD K6-III 400 CPU
128 megs of PC 100 ram
G400 MAX
Monster MX 300 sound card
US Robotics 56k Faxmodem
24x Creative Cd-rom
HP Cd-writer 7100i
KDS 15" Monitor (VS-5 Model)

I thank you very much for your time.

[Coily]

Are you sure you removed all traces of the Mystique driver?

And watch out for those damn MX 300 soundcards - they seem to like conflicting with video cards...

[Vandal]

I'm pretty sure I got rid of everything that had to do with the mystique.. I wasn't even using PowerDesk, so I didn't have to get rid of that.
At the Matrox site, it tells you how to get rid of everything that has to do with that card.
Exampe: Find --> mga*.* and deleting all the files I find.

I did all of that. Is there another way I can tell if there are any parts of the mystique hanging around?

[HDOutfitter]

I have been running the G400Max on my win98 PC for more than two weeks now. It's got to be conflicts in your system.

[cputnam]

One other thought is that the refresh rate for your monitor is set incorrectly. Try using either one of the Matrox Monitor settings or reset the monitor used to standard VGA.

[Kruzin]

where you overclocking the old mystique220 with something in your autoexec or startup folder? If you where, and forgot to remove it...

[Vandal]

I wasn't overclocking my mystique... I don't even know how, or would want to.
But I can check the autoexec.bat and make sure there is nothing there.
About my monitor, I can't even get into windows 98 to change settings.. Power Desk isn't installed. I could try change the refresh rate on the monitor. Thanks for the suggestion.
I really hope I don't spend another 6 hours working on this thing tonight.

[JamesA]

Check if your monitor definition is correct.
Wrong definition -> bad refresh problems.
It is in the Advance button of the Settings tab in the Display properties.

Used to have these problems with my Diamond Stealth 64 4MB VRAM (S3-964 based!!) in OS/2 when I first installed Warp on my system. BAD BAD refresh. Almost killed my Gateway2000 CrystalScan 1776LE.

(Heheh.. Old hardware brings back memories..)

JamesA


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System Hardware:
www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~ang/demerzel.html
home.columbus.rr.com/fajee/demerzel.html

[Avatus]

I had the same problem with my original Millenium II...even doing a registry clean and searching for MGA files and deleting them caused all the weird lines...

I deleted Win98 (Not just reinstalled, I mean...backed up my special files...dropped to true dos mode and typed DELTREE C:\WINDOWS) which is a full on delete and fresh re-install.

This fixed my prob instantly. Make sure you create a boot disk before you do this.

[acobra]

Ok, first of all there are a few VIA drivers that you would not have needed up til now...

Are all the VIA drivers installed??

If they are and you still have these problems try running the AGP driver in Normal mode. This shouldn't be an issue on the G400's as far as I know, but since I don't have one, I don't know. Just try it...

Also, you might have to turn off Write Pipeline Cashe in the BIOS, and you might want to try to pump up the AGP aperature setting as well - I heard some people say it only works at 256?? (if it only goes up to 64 you need to flash your bios, I doubt this card will work with that version of the bios)

Good Luck!!

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FIC VA503+ (1.1a, 1.15JK33), K6-2 450, Marvel G200 (5.13, 2.3, 1.21 vid tools that don't work w/ 5.13!!), 128MB PC100, PCI SCSI Adapter, SB Live Value, USR Sportster 56K, Win98, no O/C

[Vandal]

I think I might just have to format my computer Aratus.. I'll just back all the stuff I need on CD. I do think that there might be some remains of my old Mystique 220 laying around somewhere. It would take less time to just format the whole thing!

And ACC3D, yeah.. the NT drivers work amazingly. I guess I'm kinda one of the first people to actually have a retail board. I only ordered the G400 MAX on the first day you could (I really wanted this card). But yeah, I played Quake2 (in NT) and it worked perfectly fine. I also use 3D Studio MAX and I now use the OpenGL setting and it works. When you install the drivers, you get a file call G400icd.dll, so I figured that's the Full OpenGL ICD right there.

Anyways, I'm going to try and fix my problem one more time when I get home... checking my monitor. And if that doesn't work, good old FORMAT AND RESTORE!

[Vandal]

I GOT IT FIXED!!
All I needed was the VIA drivers.

I still do have some little glitchs in games... but nothing big.

Thank you all for your help.

[ACC3D]

Hot Damn! I wonder how the NT drivers perform compared to the Win98 drivers. I ask this because I have a G200 and NT performance is about half that of 98 in anything openGL. I am interested in NT performance because I use lightwave and a dual processor NT system.

[OrangeJulius]

Been running Quake3 on a G200 with the latest public OpenGL ** ON NT4 SP3 **
and it absolutely flies with skies turned off in low res.

Course, 256MB RAM helps a bunch..

[ACC3D]

Vandal-
You mean to say that there ARE NT DRIVERS!? How do they run in openGL? I wonder why nobody else has even mentioned NT drivers...