Problems with Radeon 9800 card / XP Pro

D

David Aldred

Hello!

My son's computer running XP Pro has a Radeon 9800 PRO video card. There
are hardware issues with the card (the fan has caused trouble and there are
sometimes errors indicating that the power cable is not connected to the
card on boot), but once we have the machine booted we do also have video
output.

Once it is running, though, there is a further problem. The machine's
video output is running noticeably slowly; there appears to be no hardware
acceleration. Any high-graphics application is tortuously slow and
prevents other applications from running properly. This leads me to
suspect that the OS is driving video incorrectly and using system memory to
do it.

Device Manager shows the two heads of the Radeon card, each with the yellow
exclamation mark; the Properties screen shows 'This device cannot start
(Code 10)'.

No driver CD was supplied for this card, which I understand should be
supported by Windows 'out of the box', and until recently has been working
correctly.

The machine has Linux dual-booted: Linux recognises the card and functions
correctly (tests for hardware acceleration show the same results as on my
machine, which has the same motherboard/video card combination), so it
appears that the card is functional. I don't run Windows on my machine so
can't report on how that sees the card.

What steps should I take to get Windows to talk to the card properly again?


(I do intend to return the card to the PC maker for replacement, but their
returns policy contains dire warnings about returning stuff where there is
software incompatibility, so I'd rather sort this out first!)
 
J

Jerry

That card requires the latest drivers from ATI to work properly - Windows
does not have native support other than in VGA mode. I know. I'm running an
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro w/256Mb of RAM.

Is the power supply of sufficient size to provide power to the video card
and to all the other stuff in the case? Despite what ATI's manual says I
would not use a Y-connector on the power plug to to the video card. It
should not share power at all.

Is the Hardware Acceleration slider all the way to the right?

Are you connected via the analog connection or the DVI?
 

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