Driver question(?)

[Gryfon]

I'm having a weird problem with my video card currently. It's a Geforce 4 ti 4200, by Gainward. It's locking up during gameplay, the screen will disappear and I'll get a bunch of flashing little squares and it'll then just turn white and i'll have to restart. I'm assuming it's a driver problem of some sort, but I've tried the latest drivers off Nividia's webpage and Gainwards. I've also done the updates from MSI's webpage concerning VGA stuff, MSI being the people that made my mother board and such *rambles* Anyways, any suggestions would be very helpful.

 

[Shiney]

What if any was the last system related thing you did before the problem started, eg software-hardware installation? is it locking up just in games? Have you run dxdiag video tests?
What are your agp settings within bios?
Remove and reseat the graphics card to make sure of a good contact.
Check for conflicts in device manager.

Just a few ideas, hope they help

 

[Gryfon]

Hey, thanks for your suggestions. It's actually a fresh install of windows xp pro, all the windows updates and such if that matters. Though it was happening in my last install. I can't remember exactly when it started, but it started to happen a lot just recently with two games I've been trying to play. Oh yea, and it only happens in games.I yanked the card and gave the agp slot a good blast from the can of air and stuck it back in like you said. It seems like it's seated in ok. Also no conflicts in device manager. It's still happening... sadly enough, but thanks though. *nods*

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Is there a fan on your AGP-card, and is it working properly? If not, you may have an overheating problem with that card. Replacement fans are not all that expensive.
While you are at it, also check the coolers on your CPU and the Northbridge.

 

[Gryfon]

Well, it's got the stock Gainward cooler on it. As far as I can tell it's a pretty decent cooler. My north bridge doesn't have a fan, but it never gets that hot. And my cpu has an old Zen cooler on it. Overall my system stays at about 120f or so.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

That 120f is not extremely high, but as a comparison, my AMD Athlon1900XP with a Zalman CNPS6000-Cu flower runs at an average of 80f/27c under standard load and around 90f/30c under full load.

One thing you could try, is take the AGP-card out again, and rub all the contacts on both sides with an eraser, the contacts should come up all shiny again. Blow off the remnants of the eraser, and put it back in. Maybe that helps.

 

[iss]

how long have you had that gainward card? last year gainward had a faulty production run of G4 cards in which the capacitors were bad causing all kinds of problems.