Sapphire HD 3850 AGP8X & MSI KT4V

[smiddy]

I upgraded my old home built PC this week. I put 3 GB of RAM in it, I bought a DVD Burner, and I figured I'd update the old GeForce4 Ti 4200 AGP8X with Sapphire HD 3850 AGP8X. I removed the old driver for the old card, which put it at the VGA driver (Windows XP Pro). I then removed and replaced teh video card. Turned on the machine, text comes up fine but when windows boots, it hangs and I get a cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen. I called tech support at Sapphire and they assume it is a hardware issue with the card. Before I return this thing to NewEgg, does anyone have any ideas of what to try to see if I can get this puppy running or is all hope lost?

Thanks ahead of time.

[Pinion413]

(These are just the steps I'd try if it were me.)

Well, first I'd stick the GeForce card back in and see if it still will boot properly. If it does, great. If not, you may have another problem.

If with that you can get back into Windows, double check to see that the nVidia drivers are completely cleaned out, reboot once back into Windows using only the standard VGA driver. If that works correctly, try installing the new card again.

Oh, and just to double check, you did connect the supplemental power cord to the end of the card and have a power supply in the computer that's at the very least 450 watts, right? If not on either of these cases, the card may not work properly. Even though it is an AGP card, it does have the 8-pin PCI-E supplement power connection on the end, and these newer cards require a lot of power.

Hope that helps O' Green One. :)

[LarryFlowers]

(These are just the steps I'd try if it were me.)

Well, first I'd stick the GeForce card back in and see if it still will boot properly. If it does, great. If not, you may have another problem.

If with that you can get back into Windows, double check to see that the nVidia drivers are completely cleaned out, reboot once back into Windows using only the standard VGA driver. If that works correctly, try installing the new card again.

Oh, and just to double check, you did connect the supplemental power cord to the end of the card and have a power supply in the computer that's at the very least 450 watts, right? If not on either of these cases, the card may not work properly. Even though it is an AGP card, it does have the 8-pin PCI-E supplement power connection on the end, and these newer cards require a lot of power.

Hope that helps O' Green One. :)

Pinion413 is right Smiddy.. make sure yoiu get rid of ALL the old drivers and then download the latest driver for the chipset from the nVidia web site.

But I definitely be looking at the power supply.. 450 watts would be a minimum.

Good Luck.

[smiddy]

Greetings Gentlemen (assuming of course, no offense meant <wink>),

Thanks! I bought a 650 Watt power supply to replace the 350 Watt. I did put the PCI-E connector onto the video card (I assume that it wouldn't work in Text Mode otherwise), I used the power supply 6 pin as well as tried the 8 pin supplemental connector too (based on the pin out, I assume that the 6 pin is all that is required since the other two pins are returns and the power returns are only needed so long as there are the same amount of power in pins [covers the current load]).

The one thing you both suggest which I may not have done too well, checked that all the drivers were removed.

In addition, I went to MSI's site and got the latest drivers for the MB chipset, and installed them to no avail.

Also, I went back to my original card, reinstalled the original drivers and I'm running with the old card. So the AGP8X is working on the motherboard side, at least I assume this.

In safe mode the file it regergitates on is ALIM1541.SYS, which I assume may be a chipset driver, but I have VIA and the VIAAGP1.SYS loads, unless it dies after some setup.

Thoughts?

How, or where do I make certain all nVIDIA driver files are not installed? I should likely check services? Then find the files on the HDD and purge them? What about registry stuff?

Thanks again guys!

[smiddy]

BTW, I did reboot with the VGA drivers prior to installing, just to be clear.

[Pinion413]

ALIM1541.SYS is the AGP Filter.

As long as you ran the uninstall of the nVidia drivers and rebooted with just the VGA driver and Windows didn't detect the GeForce card and apply nVidia drivers it had in the driver cache, then the nVidia drivers are cleaned. (whew! that was a long run-on sentence. :D)

With the AGP filter hanging on boot, it makes me wonder if maybe the card is defective. If the supplemental power is connected, and you're running a 650 Watt-er, power is not an issue.

Let me do a little more research, and I'll get back to you.

[Pinion413]

Next suggestion I was going to make was to check the Motherboard's drivers for the latest, but it seems you've done that.

Is the BIOS up to date? This may not make a difference, but it could be worth a shot.

Still researching.....

[Pinion413]

Alright, anywhere that I've looked where I've seen reference to Windows XP hanging on ALIM1541.SYS involves either that file being corrupt, MB drivers not up to date, or (in the case of new video cards) the video card not working properly.

I'm no expert, but I would think that if you had a problem with the file itself, neither card would work for you at all and would hang during boot on ALIM1541.SYS regardless. It *could* just be a defective card.

Perhaps there's someone who's more of an expert on this that can help shed a little more light on this if I've missed anything.....? :grin:

[smiddy]

I think you are right, I appreciate your looking into this too, I was thinking I was going crazy with it and wanted to make certain I checked everything. I did check for an updated BIOS, which it has the latest one. I wait until tomorrow to see if anyone else has any ideas too, then NewEgg will get a call for a replacement.

[smiddy]

I got the RMA. This is my first with NewEgg. I hope their service is this area is as good as their others.

[Pinion413]

I got the RMA. This is my first with NewEgg. I hope their service is this area is as good as their others.

I have RMA'ed a few things over the years with Newegg (mainly OEM Optical Drives that have gone "stupid") and I'll put it to you this way. Their return service is just as good as their service when you purchase something. Aside from the wait time of having to ship the defective item to CA, once they have it, it only takes them about a day to process it and pack the replacement to ship. Anytime I've had to RMA, I've had the replacement back around a week later (that includes the time it takes to ship the defective one from MA to CA via UPS ground).

Hopefully you get the replacement back and it rectifies the problem you were having, and it's not something we missed. :rolleyes:

[smiddy]

Thanks! Yeah, I hope so too. Considering the original one is working I suspect it was the new card.

[sigma1914]

This topic has me worried because I'm upgrading my nvidia geforce 7900 gs to a MSI NX8800GT 512M OC GeForce 8800GT. Any tips on the order to do the drivers & install? Do I uninstall old drivers b4 I put the new card in? I just want to get it right.

[Pinion413]

This topic has me worried because I'm upgrading my nvidia geforce 7900 gs to a MSI NX8800GT 512M OC GeForce 8800GT. Any tips on the order to do the drivers & install? Do I uninstall old drivers b4 I put the new card in? I just want to get it right.

Well, first, I would go to nVidia's site (http://www.nvidia.com) to get the latest drivers. Select the 8800GT and your OS when you go to download the drivers from their site. Save the driver install to your desktop, or anywhere you'd like.

Before you remove the old card, just to be sure you're going to have a clean set of drivers, go to Add/Remove Programs (in XP) or Programs and Features (in Vista) under the Control Panel. Find the listing that says NVIDIA Drivers and uninstall them (just the graphics drivers, not the chipset drivers if your motherboard's chipset is nForce). Once that's completed, reboot Windows to complete the uninstall. When prompted to locate drivers for your video card, just hit cancel. You should be in Windows with only the standard Microsoft VGA driver now.

Shut down your PC. Swap out the video cards. Make sure everything's connected properly including all supplemental power, and turn your machine on. Once it gets to Windows, cancel the driver location for the video card again if prompted. Once Windows has finished loading, run the Driver install you downloaded from nVidia's web site. When that's completed, you'll have to reboot to complete the install, and you should be all set. :grin:

[smiddy]

Based on my past experience with nVidia, your current driver will likely work too, but to be safe you should do as Pinion413 says.

In my current situation I'm changing from nVidia to an ATI varient. The drivers for nVidia would likely pose a problem and not work, thus my need to get teo a clean VGA driver (which should work on all cards BTW).

[Pinion413]

Every time I have swapped from one card to another (the last 3 being nVidia), I clean out the drivers before the new install. Granted, nVidia and ATI both use a unified driver architecture across their respective GPU's, and what works for one nV card *should* work for another, but I still prefer to start from scratch with new hardware.....no matter what it is.

[ronaldSteward]

I've always been against mixing ATI cards with nforce chipsets.. it sounds like a recipie for disaster to me.

[smiddy]

Every time I have swapped from one card to another (the last 3 being nVidia), I clean out the drivers before the new install. Granted, nVidia and ATI both use a unified driver architecture across their respective GPU's, and what works for one nV card *should* work for another, but I still prefer to start from scratch with new hardware.....no matter what it is.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I always have done that as well. While I concur on UDA, the low level stuff will be somewhat different for everything. :D

[smiddy]

I've always been against mixing ATI cards with nforce chipsets.. it sounds like a recipie for disaster to me.

I hear what you're saying, while I have no expeerience in this direction of things, I think it is a matter of design towards one's own. SLI and nForce etcetera are designed to help nVidia and not ATI. At least that would be the expectation anyhow.

My own chipset is VIA, so there isn't an issue there. But I would be less confident to use an ATI card if I had that combination (or part of) in my box and trying to use ATI cards.

[Pinion413]

I've always been against mixing ATI cards with nforce chipsets.. it sounds like a recipie for disaster to me.

My older ATI 9600XT and 9800-Pro worked just fine with my motherboard's nForce 2 chipset in the last rig I built.

As much as I can see your point, if it were truly a recipe for disaster, the motherboard manufacturers wouldn't use the chipsets. Could you imagine the amount of their customers who would be outraged if they bought an ATI card and it wouldn't run on an nForce board, or vice versa with a GeForce card and an ATI(AMD) chipset?

The only thing you can't do with ATI cards on nV based boards is run cards in Crossfire. But, on the same token, you can't do SLI on an ATI/AMD-based Crossfire board either. :grin:

[CoriBright]

There is a huge problem with the ATI HD range of graphics cards in the AGP format. I believe there's a hotfix on the Microsoft site... or maybe on the ATI site. ATI really haven't been terribly helpful in speeding up this issue.

There is no problem with the PCI-E ranges...

Oh and I think it's only in Vista that the major issues exist.

[smiddy]

Yep, I am aware of those. My situation is a little different considering it was a hardware issue I never got to the OS. I beleive once I get a good card I can fix any driver problem.

[smiddy]

Shipped on Monday; UPS delivered it this morning and it is sitting on the docks. I suspect they won't get to it until Monday. :(

[Pinion413]

Shipped on Monday; UPS delivered it this morning and it is sitting on the docks. I suspect they won't get to it until Monday. :(

I know. I hate waiting for deliveries too. :(

[smiddy]

I just looked at their inventory too for that card, I may be getting a refund instead of a replacement, none in stock.

[smiddy]

Wha! They refunded me now I need to find another card. They are not offering the HD 3850 anywhere either! ARGH!

How are the X800s in comparison?