Scrambled Boot Problem With Gainward GC

[GravitySmacked]

Hi folks, need a little advice.

I purchased a Gainward 7800GS Bliss [the one with the GT core] last week a long with a new Tagan 530w PSU. Fitted and all working fine except for on 2 occasions I've had a garbled screen when booting into Windows (XP SP2). the POST screen/BIOS displays fine it only scrambles when booting into Windows (when it's loading the drivers etc.)

When i last did it i had Perfect Disk doing a boot time defrag, I’m not sure if i had PD doing the same on the previous time it did it although i tried to recreate the problem and couldn’t so I’m not sure if its related?

My thinking is that this is a driver issue as the POST/BIOS is ok and the problem occurs when hitting Windows but would appreciate your advice/comments.


Thanks

[blueball]

a few things to try.

uninstall and reinstall the drivers (safe mode may be necessary)

Change to a newer/older version of the drivers.

Check that card properly seated in slot

Try using separate 12V leads to power the card (I took a connector from each of two different lines to power the card rather than two connectors from the same line) - don't know if that is a red herring but hey it's worth trying

I'm running the BLISS and it is absolutely rock solid. So rock solid that I overclocked it from the default 425/1250 to 550/1400 and the temp hasn't changed at all

My driver version is 84.21

[GravitySmacked]

Yeah the cards performance is outstanding, I'm really happy with it apart from the above issue.

I'm using the latest foreware drivers and the card is running at stock speeds although i did mildly overclock it when i first got it but dropped it back after a couple of days.

I have no issues running games etc.

Have already tried reseating the card but havn't tried older drivers, different psu connector so will try that.

I just want some confirmation that it isnt a hardware issue but instead a driver issue to make me feel better I'm almost sure that it will be.

[blueball]

Might be worth doing the full pucka uninstall of drivers as per instructions on nvidia website or running something like nvcleaner just in case there is some left over "baggage" of files or registry entries.

[GravitySmacked]

Yeah thanks i will try some older drivers and do a decent clean before installing to see if that helps.

I really hate intermittent problems like this, so hard so sort out and when you think you've got it sorted it reoccurs