Black Screen with certain games with ASROCK 939Dual-SATA2

[Ian]

Hi,

I had a perfectly good machine (Asus A7V333, Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM,
Sparkle 6800GT, NVidia 81.85 drivers, Windows XP SP2, Viewsonic VP930 LCD
monitor, etc.) and it ran all my games ok. However, I wanted more speed, so
I swapped the motherboard for an ASROCK 939Dual-SATA2 and the processor for
an Athlon64 3200+. I uninstalled all the VIA drivers for the A7V333
motherboard - AGP, IDE bus master, etc. and rebuilt the machine in a new
case with the same 2 hard drives, DVDROM, DVD R/W, floppy drive and power
supply (Hiper 450W). Everything seemed OK, Windows booted up, it detected
the "new" hardware, I installed the ULi drivers and re-installed the NVidia
drivers.

All seemed to be ok, I could play Doom3 and Quake 4, but when I tried FEAR
or UT2004 or Halo, I'd get the introductory movies and sound, but only a
black screen! With Half Life 2, I got a screen, but it wasn't working
properly, with artifacts in the sky. None of the 3DMark benchmarking suites
will run properly either. Is it just OpenGL applications that are working
ok, and DirectX applications that are not? If so, or even if not, what's
going on? Has anybody else had the same experience and how can I get round
the problem?


Ian

 

[Ian]

Hi again,

I have solved my own problem! Having read a number of posts in this and
other newsgroups, it looked as though it could be the NVidia drivers that
were at fault. So, I uninstalled the ULi AGP driver again and the 81.95
NVidia drivers, rebooted, re-loaded the ULi AGP driver, re-booted and then
installed the 78.05 NVidia drivers. Success - FEAR now starts OK, I've yet
to test the others, but they should be the same. What's gone wrong in the
8x.xx series drivers, then?

Ian

 

[Paul]

Hi again,

I have solved my own problem! Having read a number of posts in this and
other newsgroups, it looked as though it could be the NVidia drivers that
were at fault. So, I uninstalled the ULi AGP driver again and the 81.95
NVidia drivers, rebooted, re-loaded the ULi AGP driver, re-booted and then
installed the 78.05 NVidia drivers. Success - FEAR now starts OK, I've yet
to test the others, but they should be the same. What's gone wrong in the
8x.xx series drivers, then?

Ian

Yes, the game you are playing is called "driver roulette".
I find on average, I need to try about three driver versions
per new video card, before I'm happy.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/search.html?keywords=archive

It is possible a gamer over on one of the Nvidia newsgroups
has a better idea as to what broke in your game/driver combo.
Also, if the company that wrote the game has good support,
they may actually track busted driver versions for you
("avoid version xxxx of ATI/Nvidia driver").

Paul

 

[Ian]

Update - it doesn't look as though the problem was with the Nvidia drivers
after all. I have installed version 82.12 with no black screen problem. It
looks as though the order in which you instal the Uli AGP driver and the
Nvidia drivers is crucial. Hope this helps somebody else!

Ian