ati x1950xtx problems..

[unxetas]

Ok, I bought this card a month or two ago and it was running perfectly.. A couple weeks ago I changed my watercooling setup around (the card is not being watercooled though) and had to take the card out for a few days and used an old nvidia 6200.

When I had everything I needed again, I put the ATI card back and the system would reboot when it got into windows. Funny, but I remembered I hadn't uninstalled nvidia's drivers so it could be doing that.. Booted into safe mode, uninstalled nvidia's driver and tried installing ATI's, but the installer wouldn't recognize the card. I thought it was safe mode being funny, so booted back to normal mode, which should be alright now that nvidia's driver was gone. But it still kept rebooting..

Went back to safe mode and manually installed ati's 7.4 driver. It now worked well in normal mode and I was happy!

Until today I tried playing a few games and started having problems again.. Both R6 Vegas and Stalker (which worked fine before I switched cards around..) now display black screens while the game is still supposedly on in the background. The menus work fine, it only turns black after it finishes loading everything. Stalker even shows the game for a second or two and then goes black.

I've tried reinstalling the drivers (both drivers only and drivers + catalyst) and it's still happening..

The temperatures look fine on ATI Tool, the card was never overclocked either. I had the cpu overclocked to 3GHz but have tried bringing it down to stock with the same results.

edit: thought I should add: it doesn't crash the system at all, I can still alt+tab out of the game and close it.. the controls don't seem to be responding, as I can't hear any firing, but I can hear the music. Also, just tried uninstalling the drivers again and using Driver Cleaner, but it will still crash after the desktop is fully loaded (in normal mode without drivers..) and after installing the driver in safe mode the problem still remains..


Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

[unxetas]

some more clues.. ati tool loads up with the 2D clocks and the 3d view looks fine. If I load the 3D clocks, it'll black out as soon as I open the 3d view.

help?

[vinnyT]

Have you tried running dxdiag?

May be worth reinstalling directX.

[unxetas]

dxdiag passed all tests.. Tried reinstalling directx, but it looks like it just updated it really. Any easy ways of uninstalling directx?

[vinnyT]

DirectX 9 has a habit of not installing correctly if you have Anti-Virus Runnig.

I wouldn't say it was obvious, but here's how to remove directX, however, it involves editing the registry (I accept no responsibility if you decide to do this, at the very least make a backup of your registry, beter still an image of your hard drive if you have ghost or true image);


To remove DirectX Do the following:
Start > Run > regedit
Browse to and remove the following key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DirectX

Don't delete any of the other folders or your PC wont work.

Restart your computer and if you did above, DirectX 9 will be gone, and XP will have reinstalled 8.1 in the background on restart.

Confirm by doing the following:

Start > Run > dxdiag

This will open your directx diagnostic tool, containing a wealth of info. On the first tab, down the bottom it will tell your your directx version.

See if your pc can now run the 3d clocks, if it does, then you have narrowed the fault to directX.

Now your games prob need DX9??, so, try installing DX without your AVirus running (make sure you disconnect from the net before doing this), there is a known prob with installing DX9? whilst an AV prog is running in the background.

Hope this helps.

[unxetas]

hi Vinny, thanks for your suggestions.. unfortunately it didn't help this time, so I'm thinking it might not be directX related..

I might try a fresh windows install sometime soon as that would pretty much rule out software problems, but it would be great to figure out something else to try in the meanwhile.. :S

Thanks again, very much appreciated!

[EllTheGamer]

Both R6 Vegas and Stalker (which worked fine before I switched cards around..) now display black screens while the game is still supposedly on in the background. The menus work fine, it only turns black after it finishes loading everything. Stalker even shows the game for a second or two and then goes black.

This seems EXACTLY the same as shader model issues that people are presented with if they try to play a sm3 game ( like vegas ) on a card without sm3 ( a 6200 ). Since you just kept switching video drivers without uninstalling and reinstalling DX the part that controls whether things should be rendered with whatever shader model the card has. The 6200 without sm3 may have left traces of this information somewhere that are causing the troubles. In which case uninstall all video drivers and properly uninstall DX then install video drivers followed by latest dx ( 9.0c if that makes any difference ). If this does not fix it the only viable option i can see is an XP reinstall as it would seem the only possible cause is a corrupted windows file or component but you should make sure you try all possible options before this extreme measure first because no one in their right mind WANTS to set everything backup how they like it for no reason.