Help - NT 4 -SP5 - G400 AGP, ASUS P5A

[John151]

Man, I was so excited to get my G400, and I am now so frustrated with it.

Problem is that once the Matrox drivers are installed, and anything above 640X480 is selected, either the video is garbage, or the machine hangs. I downloaded the last three version of the drivers and they all worked (or did not work) the same.

During the install, there are several error/warning/information modal dialogs displayed, but they are in the background, and only last for a second, so I have no idea what they are saying.

I even tried converting to W2K CR1 to see if that would help, but the beta drivers would not install at all.

Do I have a bad card? Does ASUS or ALi have problems with AGP or Matrox cards? Is this a common problem with NT and AGP?

Note: Previous (current) video card is PCI. Thus, AGP slot is an untested variable.

Please advise.

[PaulS]

John151: When say it only displays 640X480, are you booting in VGA mode to do that? Can you change the colour depth to 256 or greater?

NT just sees AGP as a double clocked PCI slot, nothing special

Asus has problems with W2k in general, (see how many bios updates they have release in the last couple of months) but I have not heard of any NT 4 problems.

Can you try the card in another computer?

Paul

[PaulS]

I forgot to ask, you are using a refresh rate your monitor can handle right?

Paul

[UncleJoe]

It's your system combination. There's something strange with G400, P5A & WinNT. I had similar system with similar probs ~a month ago. I changed my system to Cel400 & Abit BX6 and probs are history. I tried allmost anything (with Pd4.12 because 4.22 was not available @ that time) all the way to formatting my hd(s)completely and installing all again, but nothing helped.I suggest you to try new clean installation and if that doesn't work, change your mobo to via-based. (P5A didn't work with V770 (TNT2) either (I tried, but toasted it) ). Good luck !

[John151]

Thanks to everyone on this site.

I was about to send my G400 back until I found this site. The problem was solved by simply make a bios change. The "AGP Turbo" must be disabled (default is enabled). I don't know what this option does, but disabling it is the ticket.

Thanks everyone

[HedsSpaz]

No, you were right with the first geuss. The ALi chipset is crap. I don't know if they even have any drivers for NT. But you can check here. www.acerlabs.com You need the AGP miniport drivers.
Hope that helps.

HedsSpaz