oops, should have mentioned...

AMD Athlon XP 1600x (1.4Ghz) processor
VIA KT266A

i recently purchased the Nvidia Geforce 420 MX card. popped it in. and it doesnt run in certain games. starts crashing. downloaded the latest drivers and directx 9. still same problems. researched it and found out that nvidia cheaped down the MX series by taking out the directX compatability feature. for the most part it ran using the openGL feature, but it still crashed after about 5 mins in certian games (mafia mohaa) might be games. but i took it back anyways.

k7SEM mainboard
Duron 750 mHz
320 MB RAM
7200 seagate 40GB hdd
currently onboard video and audio
win98 se

after i returend the geforce i got online and found a cheap radeon 9000 pro on amazon and bought it. reading the mobo manual i read that it only supports nvidia 4xagp cards. if anyone has found away around this or has any info on it, it will be greatly appreciated

I think we need to contact the makers. I have been e-mailing my maker and I am talking with them to solve the problem. We should not have to settle for s**tty devices that will not work when they say it will. If it is not going to work let the people know the problem. I have a Video card and motherboad from the same company that is having this problem. they told me it has been tested together. So they should make it good. It is their responabilty to let us know that they have a problem so we will not pull our hear out. Not to talk about how many devices or getting returned for a incompatiblity problem. It has to cost the companies a bunch of money. Sorry this is no help, but I don't think it is your prcessor, ram , video card are drivers. I think it is a problem of a combination of the evices together and we don't have all the devices to make a good theory on the problem. This is why I feel we all need to contact the makers and stay on them. They know there is a problem. Just look at this forum. We just have to stand together and make it be known that all the devices will go back and put the word not to buy devices that will not work together.Please speak out. Everybody please raise our voice at once and it may make a differents. The big companies are letting us pay for there problem. "" Lets work together."" I am going to get this going. If you would like to join in please e-mail me with your dx daig . and a list of all the makers of your devices and the type.

Motherboard=
Ram=
Processor=
power supply=
Video card
chipset
sound card
nic card
all the device chipset and the problems you have had.
What drivers or fixes you have tried.
This is going to be a fact finding mission. I will try to find out what companies are involved. I will contact the company and try to get a rep. to work with me. Please give me all the information you have and what you tried. We may get help together.

I know this is going to be a task, but I feel it needs to be done. Thanks For your help.
You can e-mail me at ronnyd@charter.net

Thanks Ronny Delafosse

Hey

I seem to have the same problems.
I have a:
Amd Athlon 2000xp
MSI KT4 Ultra
GF4 Ti4200 with agp8x
detonater drivers 40.72
directx 8.1b

When I try to run 3Dmark 2001 or UT2003, Mafia, FS2002 or any heavy 3d game My screen went black and my monitor goes in standby. The only thing left is my reset button.

This is the best thing I can suggest for any person still having this problem.

1. Make sure you are using the newest update for your particular version of Windows. http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

2. Update BIOS of motherborad and video card if you don't have the newest BIOS for both already. (WARNING: If you are unsure of how to do this step you might want to get some one who know what they are doing. If this step is interupted and you have no BIOS backup... well bad things will happen to your hardware.)

3. Make sure you have the newest drivers for everything.
a. Video Card (http://www.nvidia.com)
b. DirectX (http://www.microsoft.com/directx)
c. Motherboard
d. CPU to AGP Controller* (this one is important or it was in my case)

*CPU to AGP Controller can be found in Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager -> System. When I go there I see VIA Tech CPU to AGP Controller. So I went to http://www.viaarena.com and got the lastest drivers.

Again for a temmporary fix for some games like UT2003 they can be set to OpenGL instead of DirectX for rendering. That will make that game work in most cases I have heard of.

That is all the information I could find on this subject... so I hope that helps...

Merry Christmas to all and to all some nice 3D rendered gaming at 30+ frames per second.

I'm having the same problem. My PC keeps rebooting due to an alleged overheating (85C) of the CPU. I don't believe it, as my CPU would surely be dead by now and the heat sink is only warm to the touch. I have been in touch with my motherboards support who claim that my heat sink hasn't been fitted properly.This is nonsense and in addition to this I've tried every concievable heat sink and fan available.

I was convinced that it had something to do with my graphics card and the CPU as the problem only showed itself when I fitted a GeForce4 MX.

This has proved to be a bottomless pit as far as expense is concerned, I've finally run out of money and patience.

I would be extremely greatfull to hear from anybody who has an answer to this problem. (I think the manufacurers are hoping that the problem will go away or our warranty will expire). I am rapidly becoming a very bad advert for them.

I have an 1.6 AMD Athlon CPU
Soltek SL-75DRV5 motherboard VIA Apollo KT333 series
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX Graphics card.

Desperately yours,

Ken

Ronny Delafosse:

It is a driver problem... either that or it is hardware. In that case either a BIOS upgrade or hardware exchange would be in order. I have updated my drivers and BIOS and I was able to get everything to work. I realize this thread is long but I have put alot of info on exactly what I have done. My is working now!!!

I have varified the following games work for me with out issues.
1. MS flight sim 2002
2. Mafia
3. Asheron's Call 2
4. UT2003 (in directx mode)
5. Soldier of Fortune 2
6. Ghost Recon
7. 3D Mark2001

I agree though that we should write the companies... this type of problem sucks. I don't know if you are like me but I came home pretty excited about my new GF4 card and after 6 hours of screwing around and still no gaming or even a benchmark I was pretty angry... very angry. It took me more then a month to find a solution. We need to let the people releasing this know non-functional hardware is not exceptable for the price we are paying.

I have now tried installing a Radeon Ve. and that card does the same thing. tomorrow I am going to format and reinstall window. That is the only way I can get a clean system and start over. If anyonbe has a better idea please let me know.

Thanks Ron

for those of you with via chipsets, there is an unoffical patch that can solve the infinate loop problem (in some cases anyway, it fixed mine).
go here http://www.guru3d.com/files/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=294
they also give a describtion of the bug which is quite interesting. But i do agree with someone ealier who said that the hardware we pay through the nose for shold work straight out of the box. Oh well manufactuers can only learn from this mistake. I hope this fixes your problems.

Good Luck dudes

Man, I feel sorry for you guys. I know I would be really p**sed if my sys did all that with my g4 card. Im on WinXP, 40.?? drivers and dx8.1 and my sys runs great. I dont have an ECS mobo either.

Man, I feel sorry for you guys. I know I would be really p**sed if my sys did all that with my g4 card. Im on WinXP, 40.?? drivers and dx8.1 and my sys runs great. I dont have an ECS mobo either.

I checked in system info crap and my problem is a I/O conflict between AMD processor to agp controller and the Nvidia gforce4 ti 4200 ... I got acpi on and my bios i cant turn it off so basically I dunno how to fix it so f**k this card ill go buy an XCOX or something like it...

I don't have a ecs motherboard. It is not just ecas boards it is the VIA chipset.

I don't have a ecs motherboard. It is not just ecas boards it is the VIA chipset.

i found this site. I theng it may help in our problem. it makes since due to some computers having the same parts and one having problems and the next is working fine.
http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid=25&threadid=9263

i hope this will help.

I have a scary theory.......

My problem started about 2 weeks ago. At the time I had been running Win98, with a GeForce4 MX 440 and a 20G hard drive for 5 months with no problems.
Then all of a sudden after installing a game called "Neocron" I kept getting DDHelp.dll errors, and my PC started to randomly crash to desktop, or reboot when running other games and 3DMark.

In the past 2 weeks I have done the following, and still having the same problems:

1. Installed a GeForce 4 TI 420 (same problem)
2. Tried different driver combinations for graphics etc.
3. Formatted and Re-installed Win98 (same problem)
4. See (2)
5. Installed 40G hard DRive, clean install of Win98 (same problem)
6. See (2)
7. Installed WinXp (same problem)
8. See (2)

Here's my theory......
I think the new cards are getting so hot, they are damaging the agp ports on the motherboards, causing us all to have random type errors when playing games or using D3D. I also think that this damage is so serious it means replacing the motherboard.

Have you noticed how the systems are ok when not playing games, benchmark problems. Mines not crashed in 2 days, and I've not tried any games in that time.

My System specs are:
WinXP Professional
AMD Athlon 1.2G
Gigabyte GA-7IXE4 Motherboard
384MB Ram
GeForce 4 TI 420
40G Hard Drive
Soundblaster 128

i was finally able to get the file from guru3d. It didn't work for me. If anyone would like to get it and can't e-mail me and I will e-mail it to you. It is very small.
It could be the graphics card is getting hot but it seams like it would mess the agp up an would not work at all.
I am going to put my money on the power supply. I had a Asus A7A266 and it would not run the TI 4200 at all. It would run till I got to loading the drivers in window. Then the screen would be blank. I put my Radeon VE back in the A7A266 board and it worked find. It am thinking now that I didn't have enough power to run the graphics card on that board. I have a 400 watt, but it is genric. I think that they short changed me on the power.
Good luck to all

Maybe it is the power supply, but I've had the same power supply for the last 5 months, and this problem only just started a few weeks back.

I did a clean re-install of WinXP and used ntfs format instead of Fat32, same problem, I also tried my old GeForce 2 (no problems from previously) and my system still crashed, so I doubt it could be a power issue.

Any more thoughts?

It sounds like you have the same problem as me. When did your problems start. My started when I upgraded to a geforce 4 card. I tried this file and it seam to make my problem worst. It has a uninstall so it don't hurt to try.

http://www.guru3d.com/files/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=294

Please let me know if it worked.