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Problems with G400
Hey Guys,
I've read a lot of the other threads and can't find a solution to my problem. I've got a G400 32Meg Single Head card and so far it's been a nightmare. I'll start at the beinning...
I've got a PII233Mhz on an Asus P2L97 MB with 96 megs of RAM, SB Live! Value and an ISA modem running on Win98SE. I *had* a cheap Trident 4Meg AGP card for 2D and a Voodoo2 for 3D. This computer is going to become a second computer soon, so I only wanted to throw a faster video card in it and be done with it.
I originally left the Voodoo2 in and swapped the out Trident card for the G400. I downloaded the latest (5.41) drivers and installed them. Then I re-installed DirectX 7. After rebooting, I went to try out Unreal Tournament with the new card. It crashed after about 3 seconds in the menu. So, I rebooted again, when the system came back up, Explorer.exe GPF'd on start up. Pretty well hosed... I booted into safe mode, set the Standard VGA driver and shutdown. Then I took out the Voodoo2 and moved the SB Live card to the 4th PCI slot.. nice and far away. Installed the drivers off the cd.. then DX again... still GPFing.
So, I try re-installing Win98SE over itself... no good. I then deleted the Windows dir and re-installed Win98SE. In the process of doing all this, I've updated to the latest BIOS for the MB (they released a new one last month) and verified that the G400 has the latest. I also tried reseating the card a few times after reading all of the posts here. Nothing helped. I even got out a flash light and made sure I couldn't see any of the contact edge of the card.
Anyway... here's the current situation. The card works fine in 2D. No problems. The DirectX diagnostic test tools all work fine. The Matrox test says everything is fine. I have the latest BIOS. I have the system BIOS set to use AGP. I have an IRQ assigned for VGA. I set the BIOS to assign IRQ 9 to the first slot and Windows shows that the G400 (and nothing else) is using IRQ 9 just fine. I set the AGP Aperature to 128Megs. However, if I try to run any 3D game, the system reboots or locks up. I haven't even loaded the drivers for the SB Live! card yet and Windows does not report any conflict with it. I really don't think that is it.
Here's the layout of slots in use...
AGP G400
PCI
PCI
PCI
PCI SB Live! Value
ISA Modem
Here's a list of my IRQ's...
00 System Time
01 Keyboard
02 Programmable Interupt Controller
03 <free>
04 Com1
06 Floppy
07 LPT1
08 System CMOS/reat time clock
09 Matrox Millenium G400 - English
09 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
10 <free>
11 USB
11 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
12 PS/2 Mouse
13 Numeric Data Processor
14 Bus Master IDE
14 Primary IDE
15 Bus Master IDE
15 Secondary IDE
My brother originally bought the card online somewhere. He used it for about a week, then bought a TNT2 Ultra w/TV-out and gave me the G400. It was working in his system, so I doubt it's a bad card.
Any ideas? The only one I can come up with is get rid of it and buy a 3D Prophet DDR. (Although I didn't want to spend that much on a video card for a computer that will soon be a second system.)
I've read a lot of the other threads and can't find a solution to my problem. I've got a G400 32Meg Single Head card and so far it's been a nightmare. I'll start at the beinning...
I've got a PII233Mhz on an Asus P2L97 MB with 96 megs of RAM, SB Live! Value and an ISA modem running on Win98SE. I *had* a cheap Trident 4Meg AGP card for 2D and a Voodoo2 for 3D. This computer is going to become a second computer soon, so I only wanted to throw a faster video card in it and be done with it.
I originally left the Voodoo2 in and swapped the out Trident card for the G400. I downloaded the latest (5.41) drivers and installed them. Then I re-installed DirectX 7. After rebooting, I went to try out Unreal Tournament with the new card. It crashed after about 3 seconds in the menu. So, I rebooted again, when the system came back up, Explorer.exe GPF'd on start up. Pretty well hosed... I booted into safe mode, set the Standard VGA driver and shutdown. Then I took out the Voodoo2 and moved the SB Live card to the 4th PCI slot.. nice and far away. Installed the drivers off the cd.. then DX again... still GPFing.
So, I try re-installing Win98SE over itself... no good. I then deleted the Windows dir and re-installed Win98SE. In the process of doing all this, I've updated to the latest BIOS for the MB (they released a new one last month) and verified that the G400 has the latest. I also tried reseating the card a few times after reading all of the posts here. Nothing helped. I even got out a flash light and made sure I couldn't see any of the contact edge of the card.
Anyway... here's the current situation. The card works fine in 2D. No problems. The DirectX diagnostic test tools all work fine. The Matrox test says everything is fine. I have the latest BIOS. I have the system BIOS set to use AGP. I have an IRQ assigned for VGA. I set the BIOS to assign IRQ 9 to the first slot and Windows shows that the G400 (and nothing else) is using IRQ 9 just fine. I set the AGP Aperature to 128Megs. However, if I try to run any 3D game, the system reboots or locks up. I haven't even loaded the drivers for the SB Live! card yet and Windows does not report any conflict with it. I really don't think that is it.
Here's the layout of slots in use...
AGP G400
PCI
PCI
PCI
PCI SB Live! Value
ISA Modem
Here's a list of my IRQ's...
00 System Time
01 Keyboard
02 Programmable Interupt Controller
03 <free>
04 Com1
06 Floppy
07 LPT1
08 System CMOS/reat time clock
09 Matrox Millenium G400 - English
09 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
10 <free>
11 USB
11 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
12 PS/2 Mouse
13 Numeric Data Processor
14 Bus Master IDE
14 Primary IDE
15 Bus Master IDE
15 Secondary IDE
My brother originally bought the card online somewhere. He used it for about a week, then bought a TNT2 Ultra w/TV-out and gave me the G400. It was working in his system, so I doubt it's a bad card.
Any ideas? The only one I can come up with is get rid of it and buy a 3D Prophet DDR. (Although I didn't want to spend that much on a video card for a computer that will soon be a second system.)
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