Video Card Problem (can only get 16 colors)

[t92300]

Hi guys/gals
I have just brought the parts for a computer and put them together
the motherboad is a GA 7N400 pro
with a AMD XP2200
and the video card is a PCI Gainward Pro/450 TV (think its got an nvidia GeForce 440mx chip but after the post but before the bios it says GeForce 420 BIOS with some version numbers and a date)
I have Windows 98SE

At the moment I have 16 colors (not 16 bit) and a 640 * 480 screen resolution

now for the problem the comp is nice and quick but when i install the driver of the CD my comp will only boot in safe mode or if i try to boot into normal mode the the system hangs with a black screen when trying to load windows

I have been to the nvidia website downloaded the latest driver 18mb (argh slow over 33k dial up) and installed it the same thing happened as above (argghhhhhh)

so i have also downloaded the driver from the Gainward website 14meg and will install it soon


also (not sure if its related or not) after using an app for 2-5 minutes the system/windows freezes mouse, keyboard, everything this does not happen if i just leave it going with windows just not using it

thanks for any help you can provide

if you need any more info about my comp post a messge here and i will try and answer thanks



for an added challenge (to do with the vid card again but not windows linux)
i had (had because i reformatted the hard disk and reinstalled windows in its place) trouble running lycoris (build 61
)only 16 colors so the screen looked real bad and it ran kinda slow well all the menus loaded up slow (the menus like the start, file, edit mensu in windows)

I tried to change the vid card driver in lycoris it didnt have one for the 440mx and the 420 didnt work if i rember rightly
so once again i went to the nvidia web site downloaded the linux driver this time 3meg not so bad

one problem though theres no button for "have disk" like in windows so once again im back to the start

(I was thinking of buying another hard disk for lycoris and buying the latest version in a few months time so this ones not in a hurry)

 

[t92300]

is there not any one out there who can help
also the GPU is a Gforce 4 420mx chip (I opened the case today)
with 64mb or ram

please try to help

thanks
t92300

 

[ainwood]

Its an AGP card, and I think that they default to 16 colours until you install the drivers. But you say you have the drivers installed. Are they Win 98 drivers for it? Have you gone into the BIOS to ensure that the AGP slot is enabled etc?

And re the apps hanging - check the documentation for your CPU, and that for the motherboard, and make sure you have all the voltage and bus frequency settings right. It may be that the CPU is overheating. Do you have a temperature reading for it?

You might also want to download the latest BIOS for your motherboard.

I'm not completely sure what the problem is, but these are the 'standard' sort of things to try. Good luck!

 

[Comraddict]

you need chipset drivers. for your AGP controller first.

 

[Immortal]

I had this problem when I first got my Raedon 3d card.

It is the drivers that solved it for me.

Good luck to you, make sure you get the drivers for your EXACT system specs.

 

[t92300]

OK my video card is a PCI card and the details can be found here http://www.gainward.com/c-1.html?id=28 it is not an agp one

the bios checks both the agp slot and pci slot for graphics

as for the system hanging i had an idea last night and retried to install lycoris my idea didnt work but it let me start in system recovery mode and the option for the graphics driver that worked was a VESA gave me what looked like 256 colours and sped up the menus was going good but the point is the system didnt hang in linux, had half decent color and good speed

as for my system temps they can be found here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=61851

found some more drivers to download averaging about 9mb x3 drivers over dial up so ill try those

thanks for the help and ideas guys


t92300

 

[ainwood]

System temps are fine.

Does your motherboard have onboard video? If so, you need to disable that first.

I notice that you keep talking about downloading drivers - did the video card and motherboard not come with drivers themselves?

I would suggest that you look at the documentation for both of those. Sometimes you also need to configure a few other drivers to stop conflicts - such as a northbridge or southbridge driver.

 

[t92300]

ok the video card came with drivers i tried them but they didnt work so i thought i better get the most up to date ones from the nvidia website while there i went to the gainward website to check out the ones there and download them

also there is no on board video

ok as for the mother board drivers it came with a cd which autostarted so i installed those when it came up they were
a USB 2 driver
A win 98 fix Q something or other
nVidia system driver
nVidia Audio Driver
dirrect x 9

are those enough i didnt think to look for any more
what else should i look for?

what would the nort bridge and south bridge drivers be under they're not in auto start

should i browse the cd and and install anything that looks important

thanks

t92300

 

[ainwood]

Northbridge and southbridge sometimes come as specific parts of the overall motherboard drivers. It was more of a long-shot - they shouldn't be a problem.

Run us through exactly what you did to install everything. Is this a new motherboard etc?

I presume that you:
1.) Put the new motherboard in, and connected it up.
2.) Put in the CPU, CDRom, connected HDD etc etc.
3.) Put in the video card.
4.) Booted up the pc, with a win 98 start-up CD inthe CDrom, with the bios set to boot from it.
5.) Installed required drivers.


That shold be pretty-much the most of it. Is this an installation over another installation, or anything like that?

 

[bladester]

One thing you could try, although this is a long shot, is check to see if you have a useful monitor driver and not one of those general vga or super vga ones.

If this were a resolution only problem then that would most likely be the problem but who knows it might work with colour depth too.

The first thing to try is to look for the monitor by the same name as yours on the windows cd and then try the web. Good luck!

Edit: typo

Edit: about the linux driver: I haven't used (or even heard of) lycoris linux before but the general procedure to install a driver in linux is the following:

1. unpack/unzip the driver
2. if it is the source code, then you will need to compile it
(usually make etc... but see the installation instructions)
3. then install the driver (insmod? also check the instructions)

also, run the lspci command and see if your card is shown.

 

[t92300]

ok this is a new mother board
i think i partitioned the hard disk first before installing windows (for linux and windows)

does the monitor/ really affect it because i have just been using some old vga(i think) monitor (PC GENERAL S-VGA) bout 15-14 inches and the windows default driver it choices

ok about lycoris it can be found at http://lycoris.com any way it does not let you access the knosole or the command promt thing (equilvilant of dos) or what ever you call it and i had to download and install binutils (installled via kpm) i got that far but when i went to install the driver it said this programme cannot be run in x windows or some thing like that so i hacked in to init (i think) changed the run level from 5 to 3 (said 4 was the same as 3)
any way when i got the driver installed it said could not find the kernal h files to do some thing to the kernel and asked me if i wnated to download them of the internet i said no because it hasent got a modem and i dont think lycoris would put them on their website
fianlly when i went to go back in to xwindows/kde (ctrl +F5 as per the instructions it gave me ) nothing happened i tried emacs and pine to edit the init file again but i dont think they're installed


but any way heres what i am going to do in the next few days
i am going to re partion my hard disk for linux and windows
then install windows
then decied which version of linux i am going to get (probably mandrake as the lycoris version i have appears to be a cut down version)
install linux
if windows will stilll not work it will probably be left and i might just use it the odd time
then use linux and wine (wine would only be useded for a few games for every thing else i would use linux software)

so thanks for the help you guys have given me

t92300

 

[t92300]

well yesterday i started up my computer after installing linux and win98 for the final time a week ago.

any way after loading some of the drivers i decieded to change the monitor driver(SVGA 1024*780 75Hz or something or other win98 driver) as bladester suggested an then loaded the nvidia drivers for the graphis card and it works so i am really happy

thank you people for alll the help you have given me

t92300

 

[t92300]

at last i have found out what the problem is.
it is bad video ram i found out using a diagnostics programme

so any way its a new graphics card for me
what card would you recomend from this address http://www.ascent.co.nz/mn-product-template.asp?cname=Video+cards thats is between $100 and $150 that is agp 4x or 8x

thanks


t92300

 

[bladester]

I don't really know what card is better on that list as I haven't had experience with them myself, I use a laptop with an AGP 4x radeon 7500 and it works fine for me.

My suggestion is to get one with atleast 64mb video memory, and perhaps no tv-out if it is cheaper and you don't want/need that feature.

Oh, why don't you just get the faulty card replaced if it is still under warranty?

 

[greyghost]

I would recommend the Gigabyte Radeon 9200 with 64Mb DDR. $147 dollars is a bit pricey but well worth it compared to over $100 for a Geforce MX. Come to think of it, most of the products listed are a bit expensive for what you get.

 

[ainwood]

Its OK - these are NZ dollars! $NZ 1 = approx. $US 0.60.