Last Resort Technical Question

[LGM]

Okay, well.. No other forum has responded to my plea.. SO I hope I can get some help here:

Okay.. I have been getting progressively ticked off as of late. I've upgraded my Graphics card yet again on my HP 8720 Pavillion. The only original piece of the system left is the motherboard. the wonderful A7V-VM.

I used to have a GeForce4 ti4600 128MB on the board, and it worked perfectly. But since the card's fan died, I had to switch to a BFG GeForce FX 5500OC. It works when it wants to, but in certain games, some funky crap starts to happen. In the new Leisure Suit Larry game, the game freezes after a certain amount of time and then starts to display overlapping objects and gives the "clipping" effect. If I alt-tab out, and go back in.. There are artifacts all over the models, and everything seems to be red.

Call of Duty likes to flash alot, and make objects dissapear.

And Half Life 2... Is really ticking me off... It's doing the same thing as LSL. It'll run fine for a bit, and then just act funky. 50% of the time, I get a BSOD that says
"page_fault_in_nonpaged_area" in the nv4_disp.dll

This is very frustrating. I have the latest Forceware drivers, and the latest BIOS Upgrade from the HP site...

4x AGP is set in the BIOS, and the arpeture is 128MB.

My system:

1 Ghz AMD Athlon
512 MB SDRAM 133mhz
GeForce FX 5500
A7V-VM HP tagged MoBo

Is there a BIOS upgrade out there from Asus that will work with my BIOS and fix this problem? Or am I screwed?

Thanks!

[MrColossal]

what is the temperature like inside your computer while these glitches are glitching?

[edmundito]

Hah! My friend had a similar, if not the same exact, problem. He said that there were weird artifacts on the screen when he bought a GeForce FX 5700. The problem is that he needed to flash and install a new bios. However, he ended up messing up the process and now his computer is dead. I think his motherboard was Asus, too, but his computer was custom built.

So, be careful when you want to mess with the Bios because it could mess you up big time.

Also, these cards seem to take a lot of power. Make sure you have a power supply > 250 watts

[LGM Unplugged]

The temperature is the same as when it runs idle. Only a slight difference.

I was afraid I needed to flash the BIOS... I found the right version on the asus site, but I don't want to bother plugging in my floppy drive if I don't have to.. Can you make DOS Bootable CDs?

Also.. I was afraid I'd have to change my Power Supply.. Perhaps I should order my new case off of Newegg with the 400 Watt PSU now...

[jrl2222]

Flashing the bios should be no big deal except for the fact you don't have a floppy drive pulgged in. I redid the bios on my computer 10 times in an hour a few weeks ago just trying out custom bios logo screens I made. I would just take the extra 3 minutes to plug in a floppy and upgrade to the most up to date bios version you can get from there website. You will be glad you did. Even if it is not the root of your problem.

[LGM Reloaded]

hmmm.. Okay.. I will do that.. But how/where do i make a DOS Boot disk?

[jrl2222]

First I am not sure which motherboard you have exactly. The website doesn't list any as A7V-VM it does have A7V133-VM. I would goto the A7V page here and download the manual for your motherboard.Ã,  It should have the procedure for flashing the bios in it. As to making a bootable floppy disk. If you use XP just put a blank disk in your floppy drive goto my computer and right click on the floppy drive and select format then choose the option at the bottom that says Create and MS-DOS startup disk.

[edmundito]

obviously, my friend did something wrong, then

[LilGryph UnInhibited]

Well.. my PSU is a whopping 185W. Wow, I didn't know it was that crappy. But what baffles me is that my older ti4600 card used to work flawlessly, now it does the same thing as my 5500... I've just ordered a Rosewill case from NewEgg that comes with a 400W PSU of plus quality.. So we'll see if that solves the problem.. If not, I need to bite the bullet and get the mobo..

[LGM]

I got the PSU. Same problem occurs..

This is very disheartening...

Anyone got a spare mobo?

[stuh505]

I'm not a expert, but 400W supply still sounds like it might be pushing the lower limit to me!

[LGM UnSane]

Actually, it's not. 350W is still standard.. My brother is running on 350 and he has a monster system (compared to mine.) It just boggles my mind that everything used to work.. but now, one day, everything turns to crap. Even my old card gives me the same problems... ARGH

[Haddas]

I feel your pain, dude. I've been without a computer for a month. One day it just wouldn't work anymore. Sending it to be repaired didn't exactly help. They sent it back to me twice, "fixed", when it infact was in worse shape everytime I got it back. They are now switching mobo. I hope it WORKS now. So, I feel your pain

[LGM]

Okay, so here's my theory.

Maybe it's not the hardware... Maybe there's something fucked about DirectX..  Is there a way I can  uninstall DirectX 9c and go lower to 8 or sth?

I've tried underclocking before, and it didn't seem to make any difference. But I will try it again with the BETA drivers...

I use Driver Cleaner 3 before I try to install a new driver, in safe mode...

>>Edit<<

Well hot damn.. I switched my old card back in.. (after tightening the fan screws.. WHY DIDN'T I SEE THOSE BEFORE?!) and everything seems to work (so far)

Anyone want to buy a card?

[LGM]

Well.. Spoke too soon. HL2 still doesn't work. It runs better now, but I still get a BSOD...

So it definitely has to be software related. Wheter it be Drivers or DirectX. I read DirectX9 and the Source engine go hand in hand. All the pretty stuff can only be run with DirectX9 and advanced Gfx Cards, where as 8.1 is limited. Could this be a conflict?