Timothy said:
I have an Athlon64 machine which boots and runs perfectly under Linux,
but which I have great difficulty booting into Windows XP.
Basically, the boot fails 9 times out of 10
when it reaches the stage where it tries to start graphics mode,
after loading Mup.sys .
The machine is a Targa machine bought a couple of years ago at Lidl.
It has an Asus K8V-F VIA K8T800 mainboard
and an ATI All-in-Wonder 9600 XT graphics card.
I've re-installed the Windows system
from the CD provided by Targa.
I looked to see if the system found a new ATI driver
but it didn't seem to.
Also Targa did not have any updates for this system.
The fact that the machine boots and runs perfectly under Linux
seems to imply that there is no hardware fault.
Actually, once booted under Windows it runs pretty well.
The problem is just in the boot.
Any advice or suggestions gratefully received.
I purchased my ATI graphics card, at about the time
that the "SmartGart" code was added to the driver. This
code is clever, in that it adjusts the AGP interface speed,
just as the Windows desktop is about to appear. You may see
the screen flash in succession a couple of times (at least
you could see it, with the original code).
The approach, in my opinion, is a bad one, because the user
may already realize there is a problem, and enter the BIOS
and adjust the AGP interface speed. For example, if I know
my VIA chipset happened to have a flaky AGP interface, I
might set it to 4X instead of 8X. But the SmartGart code
overrides the BIOS value, and does whatever it feels like.
SmartGart is capable of testing the slot at 8X, and if
accesses fail, try at 4X, 2X, and 1X. Whatever the hardware
claims to support. In the case of hardware where ATI knows
the interface is bad, they sometimes won't even bother
testing at the top slot speed. (There is some trick to
override those kinds of decisions.)
If everything was working, and you installed the full ATI
package, then in the Display control panel (in some Advanced
section), you'd find a tab labeled "SmartGart". In it, you
can set what you think the card should be using, and then
on the next reboot, SmartGart will test those settings,
and if they're flaky, revert to something a bit slower.
When I bought my graphics card, that feature worked so
well, that my computer crashed on each boot, and I had
to remove the driver in Safe Mode. The driver I was using
came on the CD in the retail box. It took me about three
different drivers (later versions), until I found one that
worked well. As far as I know, recent drivers work well.
So I'd recommend going to ati.amd.com and getting the
latest driver. The package consists of two parts, the
driver code, and Catalyst Control Center. Control of
SmartGart should appear if CCC is installed. Currently,
on this OS image, I'm just running the driver section,
and CCC is not installed. And so far, I haven't had any
need to install CCC so I can get to the SmartGart tab
and make changes. ATI either offers the combined
package (driver and CCC) in one download file, or
they also offer just the driver and a separate CCC,
and I downloaded the two halves, so I'd have better
control of what gets installed. CCC requires installing
..NET library, and I think the download may have a copy
of an early version of .NET included. When CCC runs,
it may use about 50MB of RAM, which is one reason I
didn't bother to install it this time. (I did a new
install a couple days ago.)
I don't know for sure, this is your problem. But it
could be related.
HTH,
Paul
