Help with wayward 9800 Pro, please.

[Rick Catton]

I'd be grateful if anyone can offer any suggestions for the following...

Having long been a customer of Nvidia, at the last upgrade (Nov '04) I
purchased an Excalibur IceQ 9800 Pro, thinking that this would be the card
to keep me current for a year or so. Having had everything running smoothly
for a while, suddenly this morning the VPU Recovery is jumping in after
about 30 seconds of any full-screen 3d activity. It then dumps me back to
the desktop, complete with new resolution or locks the system solid.

Can't think of anything I've changed in the last 24 hours. Here's what I've
done today (to no avail...)

Uninstalled the driver and utilities and used Driver Cleaner 3.
Downloaded and installed the 5.3 Catalyst package from ATI.
Run Norton and Spybot through a full scan, just in case.

Still getting crashes out of 3d - becoming incredibly frustrated!

System specs:
Win XP Home
P4 3.0
512 Mb RAM
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS

Can anyone help, before the whole lot goes through a window!

Thanks in advance

Rick.

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

I'd be grateful if anyone can offer any suggestions for the following...

Having long been a customer of Nvidia, at the last upgrade (Nov '04) I
purchased an Excalibur IceQ 9800 Pro, thinking that this would be the card
to keep me current for a year or so. Having had everything running smoothly
for a while, suddenly this morning the VPU Recovery is jumping in after
about 30 seconds of any full-screen 3d activity. It then dumps me back to
the desktop, complete with new resolution or locks the system solid.

Can't think of anything I've changed in the last 24 hours. Here's what I've
done today (to no avail...)

Uninstalled the driver and utilities and used Driver Cleaner 3.
Downloaded and installed the 5.3 Catalyst package from ATI.
Run Norton and Spybot through a full scan, just in case.

Still getting crashes out of 3d - becoming incredibly frustrated!

System specs:
Win XP Home
P4 3.0
512 Mb RAM
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS

Can anyone help, before the whole lot goes through a window!

Have you checked the temperatures inside the case, especially the video
cards? Maybe the fan is clogged or quit working. Also check that the
power supply is not failing as 3D puts a heavier load on it also.

 

[Augustus]

I'd be grateful if anyone can offer any suggestions for the following...

Having long been a customer of Nvidia, at the last upgrade (Nov '04) I
purchased an Excalibur IceQ 9800 Pro, thinking that this would be the card
to keep me current for a year or so. Having had everything running
smoothly for a while, suddenly this morning the VPU Recovery is jumping in
after about 30 seconds of any full-screen 3d activity. It then dumps me
back to the desktop, complete with new resolution or locks the system
solid.

Can't think of anything I've changed in the last 24 hours. Here's what
I've done today (to no avail...)

This sounds like a fan/heat issue somewhere. Check the GPU fan, case
ventilation, etc for proper operation.

 

[Rick Catton]

Thanks both - good advice which I'd not checked. Have now done so and
confirmed that temperatures and fans are all ok. As a last resort, I
uninstalled the 5.3's deleted ATI files from Windows/system32 etc and
reinstalled the old 4.12's. So far...all is well. Inexplicable!

Thanks for your replies,
Regards
Rick.

 

[Doug]

I had similar problems w/my 9800 Pro. When I removed the heatsink I
discovered the thermal paste had dried out to a nice, flaky crust -- which
is great for apple pies but not so great for heat xfer. I cleaned off the
heatsink and GPU, put on artic silver III, removed the stock crap fan and
replaced it w/an old slot athlon fan, overclocked my core/mem to 416/381 and
haven't had any problems since.