WinXP always re-detecting video card (9800PRo)

[Craig Matchan]

Hi all,

just wondering if anyone else has run into this issue. I'm hoping to avoid a
WinXP re-installation.

Basically I think I was at fault, I tried to save some time and it has come
back and bitten me. Basically I had an old ASUS AV7266-E m/b with a AthlonXP
1700 a 1Gb of ram. I gave this to a friend who had a AV7266 with a Athlin
1500 and 256Mb of ram. He had WinXP installed. He also had a Gigabyte
9800Pro (128Mb version). Seeing the two m/b were almost identical, the E has
the Promise Raid and onboard sound, apart from that I think they are the
same, so I felt that WinXP shouldn't have any problems.

So, I replaced the motherboard and put the same cards in the same PCI slots,
and booted the PC. On the first boot it seemed fine. WinXP did detect the
promise controller and the h/w detect did it's bit and then requested the PC
to be rebooted to activate the new hardware.

We Reboot the system.

WinXP restarts. After much thrashing about WinXP once again seemed to
redetect the Promise controller, and requested that the system be rebooted
again. This went on for 5 times, and eventually it decided it had made us
reboot enough To be honest I'm not sure why it thought it had to reboot
so many times. From past experiece one or two reboots after it detects new
hardware is the norm for me.

Anyway at this point everything seems fine UNTIL I checked his video
drivers. He was running Catalyst 3.1, a far cry from the current 4.7. This
is where I should have left it, but no, I had to install the 4.7 cats. First
mistake was not uninstalling the old Cats, I just installed 4.7 over the
top. I've done this on my PC and never had an issue. What happened was that
WindowsXP would not load, it would reboot during the boot process. So I went
into SAFE mode and unistalled all ATI driver components and rebooted. One it
booted the hw detect detected the video card and tried to install the
drivers. At this point I cancelled that and then manually installed the 4.7
Cats. This appeared to work, however upon a reboot (and now every reboot) it
says it can't load the control panel because there is no ATI driver present.
The auto detect h/w then kicks in again and then detects the 9800Pro. It's
as if it can detect it but the settings aren't being saved, so it has to
redetect each time at startup.

I have used the Catalyst Destroyer tool to remove all traces and then
re-installed the Cat 4.7s again and the same thing keeps happening.

I feel a WinXP re-install is probably going to be the only answer, but if
anyone out there has had this problem and has a cure (and don't say BUY A
NVIDIA!! ) please speak up and share it.

tia

Craig

 

[Ted F]

It's always better to have a fresh install of Windows XP, all updated device
drivers and Windows update.

If you replace any old devices and uninstall drivers, some files are still
there, which will sometimes give you conflicts with adding new devices and
drivers.

 

[Tony DiMarzio]

With the amount of time you've already spent in trying to take a shortcut,
you could have already done a clean WinXP install and been loving the
freshness. I must admit, I probably would have *tried* the OS
transplantation first.. just because I'm lazy in the summer months, but as
soon as I saw obscure issues pop up (like the one's you've seen) I would
have done a whole OS re-install.

There's just too much going on in that windows registry to fix it manually.

It's inevitable. Reinstall WinXP cleanly and you'll be happy you did.

 

[NightSky 421]

With the amount of time you've already spent in trying to take a shortcut,
you could have already done a clean WinXP install and been loving the
freshness. I must admit, I probably would have *tried* the OS
transplantation first.. just because I'm lazy in the summer months, but as
soon as I saw obscure issues pop up (like the one's you've seen) I would
have done a whole OS re-install.

There's just too much going on in that windows registry to fix it manually.

It's inevitable. Reinstall WinXP cleanly and you'll be happy you did.

Tony, as usual, is correct. The beauty of an OS re-install is the
opportunity to start over with the lastest drivers to all your devices,
and just the general "fresh start" it brings. In this case too, a format
of the hard drive and re-install of Windows looks like it will end a real
nightmare.

 

[Tony DiMarzio]

Tony, as usual, is correct. The beauty of an OS re-install is the
opportunity to start over with the lastest drivers to all your devices,
and just the general "fresh start" it brings. In this case too, a format
of the hard drive and re-install of Windows looks like it will end a real
nightmare.

Why thank you NightSky 421... you are also, as usual, correct

But he doesn't necessarily have to format the hard-drive. As long as the
following directories and their subdirectories are completely removed,
for all intents and purposes
windows is go bye bye.

\windows\*.*
\documents and settings\*.*
\program files\*.*
\recycled\*.*

I do it this way because I've got gigs and gigs of stuff on the same drive
that windows is on that I can't lose/don't want to lose. Formatting is not
an
option for me unless I had a place to temporarily store 150+gb. So I boot
into
DOS. Load smartdrive. "attrib -s -h -r" on c:\*.* and all of the above
directors and then "deltree" them all.

 

[NightSky 421]

Why thank you NightSky 421... you are also, as usual, correct

Heh, I guess we have the Mutual Admiration Society at work here.

But he doesn't necessarily have to format the hard-drive. As long as the
following directories and their subdirectories are completely removed,
for all intents and purposes
windows is go bye bye.

\windows\*.*
\documents and settings\*.*
\program files\*.*
\recycled\*.*

I do it this way because I've got gigs and gigs of stuff on the same drive
that windows is on that I can't lose/don't want to lose. Formatting is not
an
option for me unless I had a place to temporarily store 150+gb. So I boot
into
DOS. Load smartdrive. "attrib -s -h -r" on c:\*.* and all of the above
directors and then "deltree" them all.

This could be a good thing for some users to know.

 

[Mike P]

I've had good luck with the ATI unistaller, and remember to delete the ati
folder in C:\ before restarting. A fresh install is good once in a while
though, although I use a ghost image to save time and work.

Mike

 

[John Hall]

My guess is that the motheboards were not really all that much alike.
Whenever I change a motherboard I usually do a reinstall of the OS. A
shortcut is to do a repair install of XP. Essentially a repair install
wipes the registry of all of the hardware information, redetects all
hardware, and then rewrites the hardware portion of the registry. The nice
thing about this is that the software portion of the registry is left intact
and when the repair is completed everything looks the same. Just boot your
PC with the XP CD and start an install of the OS. Do not take the repair
route that is offered right away. Take the install route. At one point it
will detect that you already have XP installed and will offer to repair it.
Say yes and proceed.

JK

 

[Craig Matchan]

Hi everyone,

thanks for all the friendly advice..and not one "Get a Nvidia" reply.

I am leaning towards a XP re-install at this point, even more so since now
I've found out that his PC is infected with numerous virus's and trojans. He
doesn't run a virus scanner or firewall because "he never gets a virus", or
so he thinks.

I think this might have convinced him otherwise.

I still think (in my own stuborn way ) that the transplant should have
worked as both motherboards use the VIA KT266A chipset, but as other pointed
out once the registry is "damaged" in some way odd things start to happen.

Still I have never seen this sort of behavior before, but you live and
learn. Being the stuborn sod I am I will probably try a WinXP re-install as
sugested and see if this works. If thats a no go and I have the time and
patience I might even try installing XP SP2 RC2 and see if that fixes it up.
Failing all of that, a good ol re-format and re-install should (I won't say
will ...that's tempting fate!) do the trick.

thanks everyone for the thoughts on the matter.

regards

Craig