Matrox G550 crashing in WinXP

[pounder41]

Hi,

I am having trouble with my G550 card not working with WinXP despite no problems with it working on the same system with the other operating systems I've had installed previously (win98SE & Win2000). I have all the latest XP updates and tried both the certified G550 driver as well as the latest one from the Matrox site.
The problem I have after I installed the driver is that the system gets to the XP splash screen and then just keeps rebooting. I've only let it reboot about 3-4 times before giving up and going back to the last working XP configuration. Should I let it keep rebooting until it works or is there another problem? I read on one of the forums about someone installing a G650 card and after 20 reboots it finally worked. Can anyone help with this?

Athlon 1800xp CPU
Asus A7V333 motherboard
WinXP pro SP2
Matrox G500 (standard)
Directx9.0c

[Mikko]

Hello,

Do you have the latest VIA Hyperion chipset drivers installed?
Have you tried the "Retro chipset VIA 4in1 drivers"?

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=1&CatID=1070

[The PIT]

Have you tried dumping the via chipset in the bin and getting a new set up. It ain't going to cost you a lot.

[GeneralZod]

I had the same problem. Here's what worked for me.

I had just changed my motherboard from a Soyo K7V Dragon Plus where the Matrox G550 worked great for years to a Soyo KT600 Dragon V2.

By default, I got video display whether I tried the DVI port or VGA port (used DVI from here forward) but no recognition of the Matrox card even existing. Matrox drivers wouldn't even install.

I changed my CMOS settings in my motherboards AMBI-BIOS to say 32mb on the AGP instead of the default 64mb. Not sure if that mattered.

I installed WinXP SP2 and rebooted.

Then I installed the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers off my motherboard manufacturers site (in my case Soyo for my KT600 Dragon V2). This let WinXP recognize that the card existed and brought up the New Hardware Wizard. I hit cancel on that.

Then I upgraded the Matrox BIOS to v.2.58.002 and rebooted, hitting cancel on the New Hardware install wizard again.

I uninstalled by old Matrox drivers and software from Windows Add/Remove Programs and rebooted, hitting cancel on the New Hardware install wizard again.

I then made a Windows System Restore point here in case I got the endless reboot and needed to restore from Safe Mode.

Then I installed the second to most current Matrox G550 drivers, the Sept 6, 2006 Windows Certified ones 1.12.00.110 SE WHQL (the ones called "latest" are Aug 2006 and the actual latest are Mar 2008). I rebooted by clicking ok at the end of the Matrox install wizard and but when the boot got to the WinXP loading screen it went black and I thought it had locked up. I was going to give up in frustration but just let it sit. On its own it rebooted again. This time WinXP loaded fine.

Note that when I used the 2008 drivers or my older 2004 drivers I got the same endless reboot that you did. Now, maybe I'm just lucky that it finally worked on the nth reboot and has nothing to do with the driver version. Maybe the real quirkiness is with the PowerDesk software and not the driver itself and I should have tried disabling PowerDesk from startup.

In any case, the driver and PowerDesk now work.

[GeneralZod]

After some more testing, my setup above turned out to not be 100%. If I changed resolution or tried adding custom resolutions it would go back to the endless rebooting.

But I think I found the solution.

I had two Promise Fasttrak TX2 PCI cards installed. Once has 2 harddrives plugged into it in RAID 1, the other was empty (I thought I would need it but ended up using ports on the motherboard for my remaining IDE drives).

Well, I removed the extra Promise card and I stopped getting the endless reboots!

[pounder41]

matrox g550 and winxp

Hello,

Do you have the latest VIA Hyperion chipset drivers installed?
Have you tried the "Retro chipset VIA 4in1 drivers"?

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx...D=1&CatID=1070

I tried to install the Hyperion chipset drivers but I got an error as I don't think these drivers were meant for a KT333 chipset. The Retro chipset VIA4in1 however did install. I then tried both the latest windows certified G550 driver from Matrox and got stuck on a black screen after the Winxp splash logo. I then uninstalled that driver and tried the version from the Microsoft Windows update site and this time a blue screen came up saying there was a problem with my graphics driver and was stuck in an infinite loop. Both times, the automatic rebooting hdid not occur... just a black screen. I let it sit for a little while and then eventually just rebooted with the last known configuration to get my system running again without the g550 driver, so basically back to square one. Thanks for the reply anyway. It was worth a try.

[pounder41]

Thanks for the tips. I do have the latest Matrox bios and used the recent (June 2008) windows certified drivers from the matrox site, along with the latest VIA 4in1 chipset drivers, but couldn't get the system to work. The constant rebooting did stop though, however it now just gets stuck on a black screen after the winxp spash screen. I don't use the RAID slots on my m/board.