Topic: Nvidia FX5200 PCI Problem

[Simon]

I have been asked to look at a friends machine, as she was having problems with graphics.  I had installed a GeForce FX5200 PCI card (Tiny PC, no AGP slot) about 6 months ago, and it has been working fine, apart from one time when she bumped the PC, and the graphics card needed reseating.  

She was getting a problem, when playing a particular game (Harry Potter POA), in that when she closed the game, the PC would reboot for no apparent reason, and then would not load the saved game next time.  She also said that graphics were odd in that when she dragged a screen, the edges would 'stay behind'.  I said I would have a look.

The first thing I did was to check the seating of the graphics card, which was fine, but I removed and replaced it anyway.  There are only three PCI slots, and the card is very close to the next card, and the bottom of the PC case, as that is the only slot it would fit into.

I then wired up and switched on, and the monitor came on, then went off again.  I then reconnected the monitor to the old onboard graphics port, fired up and went into BIOS.  For some reason, the BIOS had changed from VGA boot: PCI, back to VGA boot: AGP (can't remember exactly the terminology), so I thought therin lie the problem.  I changed it to PCI, connected the monitor to the PCI card port, and rebooted.  This time, I got as far as the Windows Startup screen, but the monitor again switched off before it got to the Welcome screen.

I then decided to reinstall the drivers for the FX5200, so went to Nvidia.com to search for the drivers.  Couldn't find any specific PCI drivers, so assumed that PCI / AGP drivers are the same, and downloaded.  Installed drivers (it did say I was installing to an FX5200 at some point), and rebooted, but the problem remains.

Then I thought I'd try Safe Mode, and lo and behold, it booted into Safe Mode with no trouble at all.

I have no idea what this problem could be, but to summarise:-

1. Are PCI / AGP Graphics Card Drivers the same?

2. Why will it boot into Safe Mode, but when booting into normal Windows, the monitor switches off?

3. Can anyone help?  

P.S. The original CD Rom which came with the Graphics Card is missing.

[Simon]

Can no one help me with this?  

[TR]

Probably to obvious Simon >>to obvious<<

[Simon]

Thanks Hook, but not quite sure what I'm supposed to be looking at there. I'm fairly certain it's installed OK, but I'm going to uninstall and reinstall it later anyway.  I'm starting to wonder if it something to do with the refresh rate, or the screen resolution settings, as Dack briefly suggested last night in another thread, but how the hell do you check those settings if you can't see the screen?

[Dack]

When you boot into safe mode it should still show the settings for the selected monitor and graphics card.

Sounds to me like the onboard graphics got re-enabled (by a bios reset?) - the machine was then switched on and it got really confused. I'd guess that the owner then would have switched off without completing the boot - corrupting the settings it was trying to update. I must ask if the onboard was NVidia as that can cause all sorts of 'features' if an NVidia card is put in.

I'd suggest:
1. Physically remove the card from the computer, switch machine on and let it find the built in graphics correctly.
2. Shutdown and then reset PNP settings in the bios (for alocation).
3. Restart and boot machine up again - still on built in graphics. Uninstall NVidia driver from add/remove programs.
4. Replace PCI card and try going through the install proceedure for the driver. NVidia use a standard graphics driver architecture so the driver pack you downloaded should work on all NVidia cards.

Failing that try putting the card in a different PCI slot, booting and then reverting it to the original slot.

Hopefully you won't end up doing what I had to do with registry hacking the other day

[Simon]

I think there was definitely some 'fiddling' gone on, which the owner failed to disclose, because when I entered the BIOS in the first place, it had been reverted to (built in) AGP graphics, and I really don't think she has the knowledge to do that deliberately.

Anyway, I physically removed the card, booted into the AGP graphics, which loaded fine.  Then I uninstalled the PCI card in Device Manager, replaced the PCI card in the slot (unfortunately it will only fit in slot 3 because of the fan), and rebooted.  It then found the PCI card with the Add Hardware Wizard, so I did all that, installed the drivers, came out, adjusted the BIOS again, rebooted, and it still switched off the monitor after the Windows Startup screen.  I got back into safe mode, and after a lot of huffing and puffing, and scratching of head, I went back into Device Manager, and thought I'd try Update Driver.  I selected to choose the location myself, and up came the list of one item, which was the FX5200, so I clicked OK, and it installed to the System32 folder.  I then rebooted, and hey presto, everything seems to be OK, so I can only assume that the problem was that the drivers somehow didn't install properly the first time.

Thanks for the help anyway Dack, and Hook.