I recently bought a Geforce3 Ti200 and have been plagued by the infinite loop error ever since. I cannot use any 3D app/game for more than a few minutes without locking up entirely. I have tried DetXP 21.83, 23.11 and 28.32 all to no avail, and updated all the VIA drivers. After searching high and low for info across the internet I have come to the conclusion that my puny 250W power supply may be the culprit, or at least the major culprit.

So bearing in mind all the other possible causes of the infinite loop error, I have two questions to ask you lovely people:

1. How likely is is to be the power supply, bearing in mind I've never had any problems with my previous TNT2, nor any other power-related problems at this time

2. Can I just plonk in a meatier 350 or 400W power supply without damaging any components, and is this recommended?

I know my way around a screwdriver (sort of) but I'm outside my limited tech knowledge at this point, so any help would be gratefully received.


Cheers!

D

Specs:
Compaq Presario with 250W power supply
Win XP Pro
1GHz Athlon, 512MB PC100 SDRAM (1x256 + 2x128)
Unknown m/board with Via KT686A (?) chipset
Compaq/Goldstar SD-612B DVD-ROM drive
LG CED-8080B CD-RW drive
30Gb Quantum Fireball HD
Leadtek Winfast 200 TDH Geforce3 Ti200 128Mb
Videologic SonicFury soundcard

Oh, on the whole, please do.

There is nothing like having a little power house like that sitting in the middle of your machine...

Most agree that an Athlon based system really needs a 300 W in any case, and I suggest that you consult AMD's website for a list of approved ones....

It might make a fair bit of noise, but sure as hellfire its a great little thing to have in there.

Keeping in mind that I have a 400W PSU, here are my system specs:



SCORPIO

1)Athlon C 1.33 GHz
2)400 W Macron AMD Approved PSU
3)IWILL KA-266R Motherboard
4)512 MB PC2100 DDR-SDRAM
5)4 x IBM Deskstar IDE 46 GB Hard Drive 75GXP 7200 RPM
6)1 x IBM Deskstar IDE 76 GB Hard Drive 75GXP 7200 RPM
7)1 x PIONEER SCSI DVD-DRIVE
8)1 x PLEXTOR SCSI 12/10/32 CD-RW DRIVE
9)1 x PLEXTOR UltraPLEX SCSI 40 MAX CD-ROM DRIVE
10)Geforce 2 ULTRA DDR-SDRAM 64 MB Graphics card
11)Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus Mpeg-2 Decoder Board
12)SoundBlaster Platinum 5.1 sound card
13)SMC Network Card (connects through proxy server to 512 kbps cable modem)
14)Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI Controller
15)Sound card connected to Sherwood digilink III hi-fi amplifier, 5 speakers...
16)IIyama 22' Visionmaster Pro 510 AG201 Monitor
17)Remote keyboard, mouse, etc... Headphones, mic, blah blah...

Installed operating systems:

1)Windows 98 SE
2)Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP2
3)Windows XP Professional
4)Redhat Linux 7.2
5)Mandrake Linux 8.2.
6)FreeBSD 4.5

And I am experiencing none of these "Infinite loops" of which people speak. Keep your drivers up to date, your machine well cooler, and a nice powerful AMD approved 400W PSU at its heart, and you'll do well.

In any case, keeping a good known spare PSU around that, even if it doesn't have enough juice for your rig as a whole, but is known good and to work, is a very wise thing....

Thanks for the advice, I just hope that is the problem...

Well, it might not be, but its definately not gonna make it any worse I shouldn't think, other than acostically.....

Search Feature is Your Friend

Subject >
infinite loop error
psu
power supply

many recent posts on these topics

yeah i just figured it was my shift to answer one

I know, I know [drone]"Use the search, that's what it's there for"[/drone]. Sorry guys and thanks for your help and patience.

Just in a spirit of mischief, do a search on "infinite loop power supply" and see how many threads you get...

http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/search...der=descending

Hehehe all i got was yours!!!

Here is the link to a great post on the infinite loop problem mentioned earlier by uncleel. Maybe it will help you solve yours. And yes as others have said, definitely upgrade that PS!!!

http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/showth...=&threadid=627

What is "Infinite Loop" error
http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/showth...light=infinite


Power Supply Concerns . . .
http://www.3dspotlight.com/vb/showth...ighlight=power

make sure you read "to determine PSU requirements."

Also be careful putting an aftermarket P/S in the machine. I tried to put a top name one in a Dell and it never worked. Just kept humming, no boot or anything. See if compaq has a list of approved supplies for that machine. I agree with the others too, Athlon should have at least 300w, I went with the 400 option !!

Good luck

Thanks everybody for the advice, but it turns out that it (probably) wasn't the PS after all.

It turns out that it's a memory issue - the graphics card doesn't like having more than 128Mb RAM installed - if I install my 256Mb, or 2x128Mb, or 256+128 etc, it locks up very quickly, but on just 128 the card is rock stable. Of course XP hates having that little RAM but I can live with the compromise until I build my own PC later this year. Thanks again for the help!

There have been alot of people with the exact same problem as you. The Infinite Loop error isnt just one error, Win XP will display a Loop error whenever somthing video related goes wrong. For example when i overclock my video card to high it crashes and gives me a loop error. I recommend going to http://forums.viaarena.com/ there is heaps of info about the loop error there and people haveing the exact same promlem as you.

-Xerak