9600SE crashes, any help

[Marcel Beaudoin]

I have searched through the archives and haven't found anything like what I
am seeing, and would like some help.

I recently installed a 9600SE and it works great for games and what. No
crashes at all.

However, when I am surfing the web, it tends to crash at times. The result
is either a black screen (which forces me to hard-boot with the power
button) or the screen goes black, comes back to a bunch of horizontal
lines, goes black, and then comes back to the original screen. When this
happens, I get a warning that the software was unable to restore the
videocard and to restart the computer if I want to restore it.

I can continue surfing if this happens, but it is not smooth scrolling. It
is more jumpy and jerky.

I am running it on a 2 year old PIII 1000, ASUS motherboard. 512MB or Ram
and 160GB of HD space.

I have the latest drivers from the ASUS website (I downloaded them tuesday
night).

The website that I get the most crashes on is :
http://sennadar.plebian.net/forum/YaBB.pl

Thanks for your help.

 

[Avid Gamer]

As long as your keep your Net Browsing at 800by600 and 16bit colour
the card should be fine, don't stress it its fragile it might explode.

 

[Wasted]

You did not describe your OS, nor did you explain
the present service pack of whatever OS you
are running. Also you need to scribe, and describe
any OS patches your machine is running. Also you should
explain how much if any, you are over clocking your
video card.

 

[Vellu]

Try disabling the VPU recovery option from Catalyst settings. Some people
report problems with it enabled.

 

[johns]

I have the latest drivers from the ASUS website (I downloaded them tuesday

night).

Get the Catalyst 4.8 driver from the ATI site. Do a clean install of the
driver
.... use the ATI Uninstall ... and go in to SmartGart and turn fast writes
OFF
and set AGP to 4x ( takes a couple reboots to hold ). Then, look carefully
at your ASUS motherbd for signs of any swollen electrolytic capacitors
near the CPU. If you see any, replace the motherbd. The ASUS mobos
of that period used those bad Asian capacitors. Symptom was reboots
and blank screens. The cap you are looking for is fairly big, and right
near the CPU towards the edge of the mobo. The top will look obviously
swollen up, and maybe even be leaking a brown fluid. No fix.

johns

 

[Marcel Beaudoin]

You did not describe your OS, nor did you explain
the present service pack of whatever OS you
are running. Also you need to scribe, and describe
any OS patches your machine is running. Also you should
explain how much if any, you are over clocking your
video card.

OK. Sorry 'bout that.

I am running XP Home with SP2 installed. I have installed all of the
updates that MS has, in its infinite wisdom, deemed necessary. (When I go
to Windows Update, there is nothing there). I currently browse with
Mozilla Thunderbird (or firebird or Firefox or whatever they are calling
it this release). There is no overclocking being done on the card. I have
installed the latest drivers from the ASUS website for the 9600SE.

The thing that is curious to me is that it has never crashed during a
game, only when I am browsing the web.

 

[Marcel Beaudoin]

Try disabling the VPU recovery option from Catalyst settings. Some
people report problems with it enabled.

Hmmm. Should I install the Catalyst drivers as opposed to the ASUS 9600SE
drivers that I get from the ASUS website?? Is there a difference between
the two??

 

[Airman Thunderbird]

Have the same card and have only used ATI's drivers. Never had a problem.
http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html

 

[Vellu]

Reference drivers from the chip manufacturer (that is, ATI Catalysts) tend
to be better, or atleast more up to date. Unless the graphic card
manufacturer has some non-standard tweaks made (not likely).

The Omega-drivers are also worth a try. (I'm sure there's an url in some
post in this group...too lazy to look it up since I don't use them myself)