Initially, this sounds like power supply problems. Lots of hard drive activity and general
peripheral whirring during windows load-up. What happens if you disconnect all but essential drives?
If it reduces the problem then its power supply related, and the fact that the 7500 card works okay
(because its less of a power load) kinda proves this theory. It also sounds like a borderline issue
that your system has recently moved into because it only does it from true cold start, so removing
one unwanted component (second CDROM drive, card that isnt used, non-self powered USB peripheral,
etc) might solve it.
You also might have a failing fan thats causing it - they tend to work havoc with things like
graphics cards because of the electrical noise they add to the supply rails. you can check for this
by putting the volume up on your sound speakers during boot and seeing if you hear a buzz that
sounds like its interference caused by a failing/worn fan motor starting up. If you do, thats noise
that your whole system is seeing, including the GFX card... the motor will be the worst when its
cold, so that would explain a lot of what you see. What will be happening is that the noise is
borderline, and as soon as windows starts accessing drives, its enough of a voltage dip to take it
beyond borderline for a split second and affect the graphics card - not enough to crash it, but
enough to corrupt its opperation. BTW, I had this problem some years ago - the failing fan was
causing enough noise to cause the CPU to intermittently hang, and it did it most often as windows
was loading (first major CPU access).
Also, when you look at the fans, look at how much dust they have on them. Just taking them out and
cleaning them off or blowing them with compressed air might fix it (amazing how much dust they
collect!).
Finally, you may have a failing fan on the graphics card itself. when its cold the fan is not
running fast enough (or not moving at all), and this causes your GFX card to get hotter than it
should. After a few retries, the fan starts getting lubricated enough to work or simply starts
spinning up because its heatsink has warmed up and caused it to lubricate enough to unfreeze.... and
you see a good system. Again, this would explain (almost) everything you mention.... the fact that
it fails during windows is then just co-incidence because its actually the time it takes for the
card to overheat, and your other graphics card of course works because it doesnt have the bad
fan.... the only issue it doesnt explain how it works on your old system... Does it work from cold
in your old system, and if so, then its not caused by this (I suspect you may be trying it in your
old system after running it in your new system for a bit, so that may warm the fan up, so worth
looking at on the offchance).
I think that every possibility I can think of right now of the top of my head... HTH
S
