Just got a Sapphire ATI RADEON 9600xt 256mb RAM with dvi output yesterday. It's the overclock edition with redline software.
It's my first upgrade since I bought a Geforce 4MX 440 last year. I plug in my new card, install the drivers and wait for Win 2000 to load so I can get into some serious gaming. But what's this ? Windows crashes!!!
I uninstall the drivers from safe mode and restart to look for answers on the net (on a 640x480 16-color display

) and find a lot of posts advising updates to the bios, the motherboard chipset drivers, using older catalyst drivers etc.
So here's what I do:
before i began:
Made sure I had no other driver sets (detonator) on the system. Uninstalled detonator drivers before I changed gfx cards BTW. Used driver cleaner 3 to automatically remove any registry entries / files
1st try:
Uninstall catalyst drivers that came withe the card, download catalyst drivers ver 4.xx to 3.xx
Tried each version.
Result: Windows 2000 boots then crashes a few minutes into the loading network settings/user profile dialog. Crash is a blue screen with a message that says something like FILE SYSTEM ERROR or something
2nd try:
Downloaded chipset driver update and bios update for my Intel 845PE motherboard.
Installed them successfully.
Repeated steps taken in 1st try; tested with catalyst drivers 4.xx to 3.xx
No change.
Result: Windows 2000 boots then crashes a few minutes into the loading network settings/user profile dialog. Crash is a blue screen with a message that says something like IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or something
last try
Removed my pci modem(!) then tried again.
Result: Windows does not crash to the blue screen, but many services/programs (e.g: inetinfo.exe) give illegal operation errors and ALL programs give illegal error. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that windows crashed to the blue screen after another restart.
My Intel 845PE motherboard only allows the AGP Aperture size setting.
Tried the card on another Windows XP system, and it worked. Could this be a driver issue for Win2k? But I tried all the catalyst sets!!
My home is equipped with central air conditioning which keeps the temperature at a cool 15C (about 30F-40F) so it can't be an overheat problem.
I am using a 300W PSU. Is that enough for a 9600xt?
I've never had this many problems with my old Geforce 4MX 440 and never thought I would since my terrible experience with the S3 Savage a few years back. I don't want to go back to the dark ages where a card has "issues" like rebooting the system when changing resolutions in Halo(!!) or crashing when you sneeze. :bye3:
Any ideas before I return my card today ?