GeForce 8500 GT Card - Display Problem

[Hushahush]

I have joined this forum in hope some of you may be able to help me uncover this trouble I'm having. I have searched for dozens of hours for any possible solutions, literally.

I have a new computer setup. An AMD Socket 2 Gigabyte S-Series motherboard with a Gigabyte GeForce 8500 GT Card and an AMD Sempron 3 ghz processor. For the last 2 weeks it has worked superbly, but then recently this annoying thing happened.

I booted up the computer, everything was okay with BIOS etc. Then when we get to the Windows XP Pro startup (this is what I use), where the welcome screen usually is the first thing to appear, I got a screen with black and white patterns, like a few white rectangles on the screen with black filling up the rest of it. So I rebooted a few times and same result each time.

So then I went to safe mode, no problem. But of course the display settings has 'Default Monitor' in the settings menu. So I uninstalled the video card. It booted up fine. Obviously it is running slowly now and some of my games are only running in smaller windows. So it asked me for drivers for a 'Video Controller (VGA Compatible)' device. So I installed the drivers that came with the CD which worked perfectly in the first place. After they were finished installing ,the screen blinked, and then showed up with a whole bunch of splashed colours, and you could see the blue colours from the window task bars etc. But it was a complete mess. After trying to uninstall the drivers and reinstall several other editions, the same problem has happened upon starting up Windows. I also tried a complete format and installation of windows, exact same result.

I would like to come to you for help first before the computer shop tries to fork more money out of me. Any help is appreciated

[honvetops]

1. welcome to computerhope !  You'll like it here *   

I have a new computer setup   <  was the computer purchased with the 8800 installed or was the card added later ?

If you added this card to the computer, did you ever go into the bios and enable the pci slot for your add on graphics card ?

lets start with some basic questions first.......

[Hushahush]

Thankyou for your welcome

This is an interesting point. I didn't set up much of my bios at all. I built the computer with all of the parts required bought from the shop. So you're saying if I haven't officially set up the PCI slot in my bios it could stop working? Cause it worked great for about 2 weeks like I said. Thanks for your help.

[honvetops]

well;  yes & NO...... The issue here is that  " it did work" <
now it doesn't and you did nothing to the bios.....

just for the heck of it...... do try and go into the bios and   "enable" that pci slot for video....

make sure all your drivers are in fact installed and get the card properly seated in the slot.....  check it out for awhile or sooner and let us know how she's working ...........  good luck

[Hushahush]

I looked in my bios. There's the following:
PCI 1 IRQ assignment: Auto (Being used for the display card)
PCI 2 IRQ Assignment: Auto (N/A)

So I changed #1 from Auto to 3 and rebooted. Same result. I've made sure everything is installed and connected properly. So now I set it back to Auto
just in case I did the wrong setting. I'm sure on how to set that up so I tried the next number up which was 3 (The range was 3 to 15).

I find it so weird how the card is always recognised when I uninstall the drivers. Windows will ask for drivers for a 'PCI Compatible' device, which is the video card itself. And now I just checked my settings and the card is occupying 'PCI Slot 2'. So should I go back into bios and change the PCI 2 IRQ Assignment value even that BIOS states slot 1 as housing my display device? Thanks for your help.

[honvetops]

IF  you can leave it to  auto and  the computer will work, leave it alone....

I cannot remember changing fields from 1-15  on enabling a pci device...  are you sure your in the right area of the bios  ( integrated peripherals ) < something like this ?

[Hushahush]

At the main BIOS menu I have Intergrated Peripherals and PnP/PCI Configurations. I went to PCi Configurations thinking it was the most relevant place. In Integrated Peripherals there is:

Serial ATA Raid Config
On-Chip IDE
On-Chip MAC Lan
NV Serial-ATA 1
IDE Prefetch mode
USB memory Type
Onboard Audio Function
Onboard LAN Boot ROM
Onboard Serial Port 1 and 2 and Parallel Port
Parallel Port Mode
On-chip USB
USB keyboard/mouse support
Legacy USB Storage detect

Of course none of this seems relevant but I took the time to type all of the menu options out to you anyway just in case

[honvetops]

can I be a pain in the  azz and ask you to list whats in your 
PnP/PCI Configurations  <<    

(i'm not seeing it in the above, your's is a bit different then mine) 

ok*  I found my book,  it should be in the  PNP/  PCI Configs
top * <  option

primary graphics adaptor     < enable this to  PCIE 1    <


Patio *  he's got a brand new card, I'm thinking he has just got one of them snag issues, nothing major...just not right  ?

[patio]

Have you tried swapping in another card to see if the vid card may be failing ? ?

[Hushahush]

Unfortunately I only have an ATI card and not a PCI. So I can't swap them over. I would if I could of course. I would assume if the card is damaged this problem is covered under warranty? it's 2 weeks old along with the rest of the computer. here are the specs you requested:

PCI 1 IRQ assignment: Auto (This slot says it is housing the display card)
PCI 2 IRQ Assignment: Auto (This slot displays no information)

That's all there is in the PnP/PCI Configurations menu. If you really need it I can get exactly what it says for PCI 1.

[honvetops]

lets see what Patio  thinks* 

[patio]

I don't understand the ATI reference...your card is a PCI-E video card. ATI is a manufacturer of sorts of video cards.
Can you borrow another video card that will fit in your machine to test if the symptoms are the same ? ?

And don't give the computer shop any more money until you sure the card is at fault.

They should replace it anyways if it is the culprit.

Actually another idea ...the shop may be able to install it into a test machine while you are there to see if it is bad or not.