Nasty Horrible Yukky!!

[The Lamb]

And words to that effect.

Last week I downloaded the latest 6.71 drivers for my G400DH, and installed the fine. Shnazzy new Quickdesk icon, the ability to swap between Duel Head modes without shutting down. All very nice, but it only worked first time. Every failed startup thereafter presented me with the wonderfull:

"Windows protection error: You must restart"

Just before the windows display initiated. So after a few dozen failed restarts I went into safemode, removed the beta drivers and reinstalled the 6.51 drivers.
Now I can get into windows again, but it takes between three and ten restarts with windows protection errors before I get the nice greeny/blue windows screen again.
I have repeatedly tried to install different and older drivers, but either the G400 packs up and no longer outputs to the monitor, or it's constant WPE's and restarts.

So, has anyone else had this problem, or can anyone suggest a solution?

Many thanks in advance.

[Peter Aragon]

Hi Lamb

Have you tried to uninstall PowerDesk and to set the display adapter to VGA adapter? That way you can get rid of some files that may have remained from 6.71



We can help you better when you give us some information about your OS, (service pack,) hardware, irq's, motherboard, etc.

Good luck,
Peter

[The Lamb]

I've unistalled all the G400 driver compenents by hand, by windows uninstall, and by Tweakall. I ran fine with a basic PCI VGA adapter driver, but I'd like my duel monitor and high resolution thanks .

OS - Win 98 SE, AMD K6iii, GA-5AX mobo, SBLive!, G400DH. IRQ settings haven't changed, and I don't have any conflicts or sharing with the G400 adapter.

Unfortunetly it might be a hardware error in the G400. It's always been incredibly unstable with 3D and streaming media, which might either be a faulty gate in my K6 or in the G400's memory controller.
Maybe the 6.71 driver just tipped the dodgy G400 over the edge, i've seen it before, with a new driver blowing out old equipment (My Orchid Righteous went boom).

[Greebe]

Peter's suggestion with uninstalling the old completely, ie even in the registry and dropping back to VGA mode in order to see if there is still problems. If not, installing another set of drivers may fix your problem... but I personally think the problem is with the MB you're using.

Check this out... http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/For...ML/005651.html

[Peter Aragon]

Make sure to put the SBLive in PCI slot 3. Don't ask why, just do it ;-) That allready solved a lot of instability problems in lots of hardware setups.
And make sure to try to force AGP to 1X or even to turn it completely off and see if the problem is still there.

Oh yeah, I indeed heard rumours about ALI chipset problems...

Best of luck,
Peter

[The Lamb]

Thanks for your help. I'll see if I can mess about with the AGP settings, and I think I may have already moved my Live! around (I remember searching for a stable PCI slot). I'm pretty sure there haven't been any more ALI driver releases since the last time I updated them.

All in all though, that would only help with the general instability, something which I have long learnt to ignore. My problems started directly in response to me installing the beta Matrox drivers, and I guess since completely unistalling them doesn't work, the problem is now permanent.

Hmm, I seem to have a habit of buying dud equipment.

[Taz]

Originally posted by Peter Aragon
Oh yeah, I indeed heard rumours about ALI chipset problems...

Umm, I used to use my G400 on an Iwill XA100plus which uses the same chipset, (ALi Alladin V), without problems, do you know which particular ALi chipset is affected?

[Peter Aragon]

May I conclude then you don't have a SBLive?
The problem occurs often on systems with a SBLive, and it is also very OS specific. But I haven't investigated in which circumstances this occurs.

I've always managed to prevent problems by sticking to ASUS, with non-VIA chipset. (not planning to start a flame on this statement, it's just that I've never been disappointed by Intel chipsets on ASUS MoBo's )

Regards,
Peter Aragon