Powercolor X1950 Pro Windows XP Boot problems

[James.Bond]

Hi all, I'm new here

Just wondering whether anyone can help me out as it seems there is more troubleshooting information on public forums then I can get from ATI support at the moment

I just bought a brand new X1950 pro to replace my X800 GTO graphics card. However, I'm having an increasingly common problem in regards to booting windows.

Details of the problem:
1) Windows refuses to boot with installed hardware
- It crashes on the black screen with blue bar - blue bar freezes
- Attempted numerous reboots, no solution
2) Attempted install on safe mode
- Setup informed me that it could not find capatible hardware for install (WTH???)
- Installed it successfully using Window's normal setup options
3) Windows XP still wont boot
4) Attempted VGA mode - same hang
4) Reinstalled X800 - works
5) Downloaded latest video drivers from ATI site, latest windows updates, latest chipset drivers from VIA (v512 now)
- Uninstalled X800 drivers using add/remove and driver cleaner pro
6) Reinstalled X1950 - still wont work
7) Went to safe mode, and attempted the following
- Set hardware acceleration to none, disabled write combining
- Went to BIOS and disabled all AGP fastwrites,etc
- Disabled sound card (another bloke with the same problem said it fixed his)
- Went on msconfig and selected diagnostic startup
- Attempted to install the latest drivers using ATI setup - same message as it was on the CD

None of which helped

Here's my software specs:
- Windows XP SP2

And my system specs:
- VIA K7 Motherboard
- AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.6 GHZ processor
- 1GB DDR RAM
- 8 GB Hard Drive
- SB Live! Sound card
- ATI Radeon X800 (Since X1950 aint working)

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks

[honvetops]

  I'm looking at this  powercolor  x1950  ............<< nice card*   
*certain cards have different hardware specs (requirements) *

Do you have at least a  450 watt rated power supply ?

[James.Bond]

It's 500 Watts, brand new for this card

P.S. Yes everyone said that it was a nice card so I bought it before going to a search engine and typing 'ati radeon x1950 windows xp boot lockup hang troubleshooting' lol
Because then I would have backed off a bit and spent it on an Nvidia Geforce 7950GT... regrets...

It's all over the forums, similar but rather common problems, but some at least managed to get into windows first heh - Thankfully I know there's some hope as some people managed to get it to work sweetly

[honvetops]

Hummmm,  I read quite a bit on this card and reviews  ......  if you have decent air flow and "no" heat issues I am not sure on a remedy here......

just a thought......  on your  1 gig of  ram   <   is this dual channel (2 sticks) or one stick ?

if dual,  might take out the 2nd stick and just see if that allows windows to boot up ........     

there are some more experienced members who should be online shortly.... 

[James.Bond]

It's dual, 512 + 512 DDR, and yup I've tried that too heh
Even tried plugging the power cables into different slots - as many combinations I can think of before I plugged it back normally heh

Even tried changing the PCI slots for other devices then taking them out, putting it back in... *censored* the weekend drove me insane

In the end the problem keeps happening. It seems more like a driver issue windows seems to be having. But I dunno - most people at least managed to get into windows

[patio]

I would consider returning it for a replacement....it should be recognised in safemode.

[James.Bond]

That's pretty much the only option left it seems... swap it with the more stable 7950GT and pay the price difference

*sighs* I really wanted this thing to work