Weird ATI problem

[pastymuncher]

Hi guys, i just got a brand new Sapphire X1600XT 256mb pci-e card (£25) to go in my SFF pc. I uninstalled the Nvidia 6150 onboard graphics drivers using the Add/Remove in the XP control panel. I then rebooted into safe mode and ran driver cleaner to get rid of all traces of the Nvidia driver. Booted into the bios and disabled the onboard graphics and shut down. Installed the X1600XT and booted up.

On reaching the desktop the new hardware wizard detects the card so i hit cancel and install the Cat 7.6 drivers. Reboot and every now and then i get a message saying that the drivers are malfunctioning. Going into the device manager i have no display adapter. I have an Unknown at the bottom of the list. No yellow thing with a question mark, just a grey diamond next to the + sign. I have a display and it seems to be ok but on firing up a game it is very sluggish.

I uninstalled all the motherboard and graphics drivers and ran driver cleaner to make sure they were completely gone. I then installed the latest drivers for the motherboard (which i already had anyway) and rebooted. Then installed the graphics drivers again and rebooted. Same problem. Uninstalled the graphics drivers and ran driver cleaner again then shut down. Replaced the X1600XT with a Sapphire X1600Pro 256mb which i know works, booted up installed the drivers and restarted only to get the same problem. I have now tried Cat's 7.5, 7.6, only to keep getting the same problem. The cards do not need any additional power. I thought that the pci-e slot might have died but surely it would'nt get picked up at all then. I know it did work as i have had a 7800gt in there in the past. What on earth is going on here?

Here's the pc's spec:-

Enermax Liberty 400w psu,
AMD A64 3200+,
2x512mb Crucial dual channel ram,
Foxconn 6150K8MD-8EKRSH M-atx motherboard this one.
Sapphire X1600XT 256mb pci-e graphics card,
Samsung Spinpoint 160gb sata2 hdd,
NEC ND-5170 18x DVDRW ide drive.

Any ideas guys?

 

[pastymuncher]

Any ideas at all?

 

[Avatar261]

Sounds like a faulty mobo to me

 

[spookywillow]

i know its a long shot but have you tried reinstalling windows?

 

[todosmentira]

Noticed you are overclocked - is your PCI-E locked to 100 in the BIOS? Try setting it to auto. This seemed to stop problems with my X1950pro.

 

[pastymuncher]

Noticed you are overclocked - is your PCI-E locked to 100 in the BIOS? Try setting it to auto. This seemed to stop problems with my X1950pro.

Completely different pc. The spec of the pc with the problem is in my first post.

Avatar261, if it was a faulty motherboard then surely the graphics card would'nt work at all.

Spookywillow, this rig is getting replaced in a couple of weeks and stuck in another chassis so i will reinstall windows then. Couls be a windows problem but not sure. One minute it was fine then i started getting the malfunctioning driver message. Reinstalled all the drivers several times now to no avail. The graphics card does definately work though.

Given up on this problem for the time being.

 

[Scougar]

I remember with some older cards, you had to let the O/S detect the card as vga card first, then install the drivers else it wouldn't work correctly. Try that before giving up

Matthew