Radeon 9500 upgrade problem

[Nemi]

Hi, I just got my new Radeon 9500 pro and am having some problems. It will go along for a while in windows, then it will either lock up or windows comes up with this "Windows has recovered from a serious error and needs to be shut down. Please save all your work bla bla bla...". Then the screen will revert to 640x480 in 256 colors.

I had a geforce2 in it with nvrefresh installed. I removed the old geforce drivers, I searched for all nvidia files and removed them, I went through the registry and removed all instances of nvidia stuff I could find. I installed directx9.0, because the catalyst3.1 drivers call for them. It has made no difference. I have tried both the 3.1 and 3.0 drivers.

Anyone have a clue? Thanks a lot for any help

 

[Glitchny]

i had a similar problem, had to remove all references to any drivers and then reinstall all over again and then make sure ATI smart was enabled

 

[Nemi]

Are you talking about SMARTGART?

I just went to driverheaven and downloaded a 'cleaner' program and removed all traces of ati and nvidia files on my pc (the nvidia ones were alreay gone). I reinstalled directx9 then the 3.0 catalyst drivers. I went and looked at the smartgart you mentioned and noticed that now the fastwrites is off, when it was on before. I thought that was interesting. Unfortunately it is still locking up. :/


EDIT: I just changed the AGP aperture in the BIOS to 2x and now it will let me start 3dmark2001, where it would always lock as the splash screen was coming up before. I have not run any tests, but if I find that cures the problem I will post for any others that may have the problem in the future.

EDIT2: no good, it still locks up with agp aperture at 2x and fastwrites off.

 

[Nemi]

For those interested, I think I have found the problem. Looking around, I found that an athlon 2000+ pulls over 7 amps on the 12v line of the power supply by itself. Looking, my 300w PS only supplies 9amps on the 12v line. I stuck in an old 1ghz athlon I had and the thing ran 3dmark2001 demo in a loop for over 30 minutes. I am going to run it all night, but this appears to be the problem. Before I could not even start 3dmark2001 or it would lock. just an FYI


EDIT: Got a new PS and put it in and it did not fix the problem. From reading over at Rage3d forums, apparently a lot of people have problems with ATI boards. I hate to say I am going to RMA this and get a ti4600. :/