Major issues with new 9500 Pro

[graeme]

Hi,

I have just purchased a new Connect 3D Radeon 9500 Pro card to replace me GF2 MX 400.

I installed the card fine and booted prefectly into XP but when I installed the drivers from the supplied CD (Cat 2.5)and rebooted, XP got to the log in screen and then showed a message "Cannot flush write cache to disk. Cannot write to c:\. Device is unavailable".

I then rebooted to a blue screen of death with an Unmountable Boot partition, which I managed to fix using another machine with XP and CHKDSK on boot.

I then successfully booted into safe mode and uninstalled the ATI drivers, rebooted normally and tried installing the
Cat 3.2 drivers. Rebooted and the same write issue and a corrupded disk, fixable through CHKDSK.

I unistalled the drivers through safe mode again and rebooted. XP recognised the card automatically and installed the cat 3.2 drivers again, but this time without a reboot, the display settings then allowed me to change the resolution etc. tried rebooting and same write problem.

I am going to try a clean install of XP on another partition tonight to try an eliminate a driver conflict.

Has anyone experienced anything similar or have any ideas?

Thanks,

Graeme

System Specs:
Enlight 250w Power Supply
Sony DVD
ECS K7S5A Mothrboard
Athlon 1133MHz CPU
256Mb Crucial Memory
SB Audigy 2
IBM Deskstar 120GXP 60GB

 

[selfbuilt]

First guess would be a power supply problem. Try disconnecting everything non-essential (e.g. DVD, case fans, sound card, etc) and trying again. Unfortunately, the ECS boards don't come with much in the way of diagnostic programs, but see if you can find a utility that lets you monitor voltages on each of the PSU rails (dips in voltage would tell you that you are having problems).

ATI recommends at least a 300W power supply for the Radeon 9500 pro (and I would add parenthetically a *good* 300W power supply). I'm running an Antec 330W "True" PSU with the 9500 Pro without problems.

Where does good judgement come from? Experience. Where does experience come from? Bad judgement.

 

[Crashman]

It sounds like the video card is pulling power needed by the hard drive, the only solution being to add more power!

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[tombance]

Isnt that the motherbaord that hates small PSU's? If so you probably just pushed your 250 watter over the top.

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5467618 " target="_new">Almost Breaking 12k!!</A>

 

[ianmills]

Did you figure this problem out?
I have a ECS K7S5A motherboard as well (but with a 300w) power supply and am planning on getting a radeon 9500pro in the next month or so... It would be helpful to know if I might get the same problem...

 

[graeme]

Update:

Thank you for the replies.

I have fixed the problem by reinstalling XP.

Everything now works perfectly, 8500 in 3D Mark 2001 (1024x768 32bit colour, No AA) and 3250 in 3D Mark 2003 (1024x768 no AA)

I have also reconnected my CD-RW as well with no power issues - It caused power issues in my old 200w PII 266.

I assume therefore that it was caused by a driver conflict.

ianmills: Make sure that you use the latest AGP driver from www.ecs.com.tw - I used them when I installed the new clean XP installation, but I am unwilling to try them on the broken one to see if that was the issue now that my machine is running fine .

Thanks,

Graeme