hardware compatibility?

[merj]

this is driving me up a wall!

i just built a dual PIII 1GHz box with an Abit VP6 board running w2k and a g450. originally, when i initially built it all worked fine and no issues with the g450. i then decided to put the g400 with the raindow runner g-series from my old machine into the new box in order to do video capture. this was a nightmare. eventually i got it running and all was good. after some misc. peripheral and other software additions the machine began to freeze at random times. eventually i pinpointed the problem to the g400 and the capture card so i put the g450 back in. now i either get beep codes of no video or no video with no beep codes!?!? explain that! i've put in an old video card i had laying around to get video back and unistall all drivers and software. i then tried installing the g450 and get the same issue.

help? please?

here's the system:
dual pIII 1GHZ on an Abit VP6
windows 2000
maxtor 40GB hard drive
cendyne 12x burner
noname cd-rom drive
zip drive and floppy
linksys nic
soundblaster ensoniq sound card

[The PIT]

Could be a corrupt bios. I had to a recovery for my G400 for the second time and that gave bleeps in one machine and none in the other. You can download the recovery program from www.matrox.com/mga/support/drivers/files/ftp_util2.cfm.
I presume that the G400 still works. If the freezing started after adding other perhipals it sounds that they were the problem and not the G400.

[Dr Mordrid]

It could very well be a corrupt mainboard BIOS. I had something similar happen with an Abit BH6.

The problem is that when the BIOS dies it takes the PCI bridge and AGP with it. Without these you have no CD, AGP or HDD access, but the floppy will work as will a plain-Jane PCI video card. An AGP card won't display so you get a black screen so you think the Gxx died.

To see the boot screen you need an old no frills PCI VGA card. I have an old 1 meg VGA I use for these occaisions. Once you get a display you then have command line access to a DOS boot floppy ONLY, so you can at least boot to DOS and flash a new system BIOS.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 10 April 2001).]

[merj]

well, i tried the recovery program and it got the machine to restart with video, but after it did the memory test, it froze. so i tried it a again and i couldn't get it it boot from the a: drive again to do its thing. restart after restart still got nothing.

i don't think its the m-board bios because after putting my old card in (it's AGP) the machine comes up no problem and all works again. i'm not sure what to do at this point.

i just noticed that the g450 still comes up in the device manager even after i used matrox's uninstall utility. hmmm, could this be adding to the problem? even after running the "detect for hardware changes" it still thinks the card is there. anyone know how to remove the system files manually? i think this is part of the problem.