hope this helps someone
i had the infinate loop displayed on the blue screen of death
the only was to get into windows was via safe mode in vga
removed all drivers and started it up again, reloaded drivers... no fix
after turning it off a few times it just would no longer load and restarted prior getting into bios and failed to turn on monitor.
obviously i freaked out at this stage.
tried running one car instead of 2
no fix
swapped cards etc
no fix
tried starting with no video cards at all (no onboard)
still no fix so it couldn't be the cards - possibly motherboard?
i tried whilst still able to get into windows all the above fixes with no luck
spoke to my it bloke at work, tried a few things and got it working
problem was my ram had given up the ghost. i was running 4 sticks of 1gb kingston ram
to find this out
i removed slots 2 and 4
no fix
swaped the removed ram with 1 and 3 and started up fine
reloaded the ati drivers and works!
basically the ram was shorting out creating wierd stuff to happen then gave up completely which wouldn't allow a boot
bit slower now i'm on half my ram but happy the cards are fine.
thanks to all those who posted previously.
assisted me to find the fix - just posting this as an alternative possible solution... worked for me
system
4gb ram
3ghz intel core duo
2x ati radeon pci 512 vid cards in cross fire
win xp
looking for proper gaming ram now with heat sinks
may have been the cause of the failed ram although i have 5 fans in the system in total!
Cheers guys for the previous posts and i hope someone can make some use of this
i had the infinate loop displayed on the blue screen of death
the only was to get into windows was via safe mode in vga
removed all drivers and started it up again, reloaded drivers... no fix
after turning it off a few times it just would no longer load and restarted prior getting into bios and failed to turn on monitor.
obviously i freaked out at this stage.
tried running one car instead of 2
no fix
swapped cards etc
no fix
tried starting with no video cards at all (no onboard)
still no fix so it couldn't be the cards - possibly motherboard?
i tried whilst still able to get into windows all the above fixes with no luck
spoke to my it bloke at work, tried a few things and got it working
problem was my ram had given up the ghost. i was running 4 sticks of 1gb kingston ram
to find this out
i removed slots 2 and 4
no fix
swaped the removed ram with 1 and 3 and started up fine
reloaded the ati drivers and works!
basically the ram was shorting out creating wierd stuff to happen then gave up completely which wouldn't allow a boot
bit slower now i'm on half my ram but happy the cards are fine.
thanks to all those who posted previously.
assisted me to find the fix - just posting this as an alternative possible solution... worked for me
system
4gb ram
3ghz intel core duo
2x ati radeon pci 512 vid cards in cross fire
win xp
looking for proper gaming ram now with heat sinks
may have been the cause of the failed ram although i have 5 fans in the system in total!
Cheers guys for the previous posts and i hope someone can make some use of this