alamarmalomar

After downloading the latest drivers and installing them (and cleaning out the previous ones), I've been plagued with computer restarts of the ati3duag.dll and ati2cqag.dll variety. Safe mode driver cleaning has been fruitless, and I can't play Garry's Mod 10 with my friends or play Warhammer Online without these restarts happening.

In light of this, are there more stable/optimized drivers for an AGP Radeon X850XT, and if 8.9 is the most stable version, what else can I do to diagnose this problem?

EDIT: System specs

AGP Radeon X850XT
1 GB PC2700 RAM (2 x 512 MB)
AMD Athlon XP 3200+

I bought a Compaq SR1230NX four years ago and basically put a 512 MB stick in and put the Radeon X850 in.

Liqourice

For the old X-series cards you shouldn't use any later than 7.11.

Personally I found that the 7.10 set worked best with my old X850XT.

alamarmalomar

No dice...Now I get a "Failed to create D3D Device!" error when booting up any Steam games. Their site says to install the latest drivers, but then I start getting the ati3duag.dll restart errors, and Warhammer will once in a blue moon crash with an ati2cvag.dll (something like that) error.

Things I've done:

Tried out the 8.8, 8.9, 8.8 AGP hotfix, 7.10, 7.11 drivers (I've used driver cleaner + safe mode to clean out the old drivers every time)
Installed latest version of DirectX
Installed motherboard chipset drivers

I've not tried to reinstall XP yet, and I really don't want it to come to that.

Judas

that sounds like either a seriously corrupt driver install.. or windows flying apart... or hardware failure occuring.

i've used the latest drivers for all my ATI cards..... the 9500/9550/9600xt golden oldies work great with the latest drivers.

__________________

alamarmalomar

I was thinking about that too. My Windows seems to be working just fine, aside from playing Garry's Mod (and Warhammer has restarted once). I don't get artifacts (I think that's the term, sometimes in Warhammer my game freezes up, everything turns weird glowing tinfoil/static colors and then reverts to normal) and I seriously doubt that about ten different drivers would all be corrupt, and they've installed seamlessly from what I've seen.

Maybe I'm not cleaning my old drivers up right? I've heard Driver Cleaner 1.5 doesn't work as well nowadays. I'm also defragmenting my hard drive as I post tihs.

Judas

weird tinfoil static colors and then reverts back to normal.......?

that's not a great sign....


that could potentially be due to overheating or memory on the card failing..

while i would tend to agree that multiple drivers being corrupt is a slim chance.. it isn't if the intial uninstall didn't go quite right leaving every install afterwords kinda messed up...

__________________

alamarmalomar

I tried testing my card with Gmod 10, and I've confirmed that repeated explosions will restart computer in half a second. I'd lay some dynamite around a pod, get inside the pod and mash the detonate key and my computer restarted instantly. What could that be a sign of?

Also, what's the best way to test my video card out for problems?

Dyre Straits

First, download CCleaner and run the Cleaner and then the Registry apps to clean up your current system. www.ccleaner.com

Once you do that, reboot a couple of times and repeat to make sure things are good and cleaned up of all the debris/corruption.

After this, uninstall the video card from Device Manager, reboot and do not let Windows reinstall anything...yet! Cancel all attempts of Windows to install anything related to the video card.

Now, run CCleaner again...both apps, but, especially the Registry app. After it finds and cleans up things again, reboot and this time let Windows install any drivers it deems needed for the video card. Once done, then run the installation of the latest...or desired...ATI/AMD drivers for your card. Reboot.

Make sure you have the latest DirectX drivers installed.

Now, test the card again. If problems persist, I'd tend to think it's a faulty card.

Good luck!

__________________

[hobo]eclipse

have you tried any of the omega drivers?

how old you wanna go? i specifically recall 4.12 omega being a great set, but that may be to old.

Judas

ok.... this may sound odd.. but stating that having repeated explosions will cause your computer to emediately reboot suggest a lack of power... your PSU is likely unable to cope with the demands.

This same thing would occur with the ATI Radeon x1900xtx i had when put into a machine containing a 430watt psu. The rails on it were relatively decent enough, but apparently durring specific instances, such as 3DMark06's benchmark where the guy with a chain gun would shoot across and at the very moment when the big bin/canister looking thing fell and made all that dust/smoke and whatnot fly out around it, the machine would instantly reboot. Replacing the psu with a 500watt resolved the issue.

Another case where the exact same thing happened was actually with the same card only in crossfire using a 600watt power supply made for sli. Same exact thing would happen in 3dmark06 and the machine wouldn't restart, it would just shutdown... the psu would have to be manual reset to get it up and running again. The problem was the PSU yet again, unable to cope with the demands of the video card. Replacing it with a 700watt resolved the problem.

Now you may be asking why it would only start showing up now.... the fact is that Power Supplies "decay"... as in thier rated output slowly tapers off as it's used and as it's aged.... the more load on the psu and closer to it's maximum output for long durations.... the quicker the psu decays. If your PSU was already near it's max load, that would explain why it would suddenly start showing these symptoms..


this is meerly a suggestion but, it could quite conceiveably... be your psu.

__________________

alamarmalomar

...that would make sense. I did buy my PSU (it's 450 W btw) in March 2006. 2.5 years of use would do that, I guess.