[goodbyehester]

I installed a 7600GT upgrading from a radeon 9800 pro and preceding the problem i'm about to mention, there were some question whether my power supply was enough having a 300w Heralchi Electronics with only 12v on the 15a (doesen't tell me much - just repeating).

Anyway; the problem is that when I play videos in no matter what player (vac/wmclassic/wmplayer) window goes all crazy, starting with the movie not showing and portions of the window not showing up, then things flickering in and out (like portions of text and the restore and close bar or objects) slowly and at a strange pace, and things evolving - when I click - not only slowly but it's like there's no logic to how things show up in time and execution, and sometimes the monitor or screen goes "clunk" and is black for a fraction of a second or so, and often almost rhtymically - spread out - over a long period of time whenever it shows. And the taskmanager doesen't stand over this, the three or so times I've tried (it's a very cumbersome mess to deal with) i've had to shut off cold or when done early only pressed it in so that windows
starts to shut down, but even that takes like 15 minutes and doesen't show up quick or anything. The mouse lags and hops as well.

What is confusing is that the first thing I did was try some Battlefield 2 on 1024 x 768 and high settings with performance not being as good as it should (might be down to c: only having 500 mb free and a old and long run of windows with spyware and what not) but with no problems, and if it is a power issue, then that should act up for sure, shouldn't it?
What can this be about, videos (up to this point) doing that, driver residue dealing with videoplayback or what?

(It was installed in this manner; computer shut down, yanked out the 9800pro but couldn't remove the additional power source (a hd-plug that sat like crazy) so it hang for a while, moved a usb2-card and a live!,
put in the new card, got the 9800 out, connected the new cards additional power cords (two harddrive-connectors), plugged everything in and started up.
I hadn't planned putting everything in at this stage but with the previous hassle with the old card I wasn't too keen on starting over.
So I did NOT uninstall the ATI drivers and use driver cleaner in safe mode inbetween two reboots before putting in the new card, what I did do was that I first misstakingly thought the bootup-menu was on f7 so it actually went into windows with the new card put in (recognized it as vga device and the radeon was gone I think), but I rebooted and now did a second misstake of pressing f9 and got a dialogue but some file was missing when I chose safe mode (I dont know what that was),
and on the third attempt f8 and got it right. I may have uninstalled or installed something in regular windows, only the nvidia driver I think.)

Any good way - other than a format that I'd prefer to avoid - to be sure everything in the gfx-deparment/movieplayback is OK?

system: p4 3 ghz nw, abit is-7, 2 gb corsair ddr400, 1 hd, gainward 7600gt gs 256 mb.

 

[Geekgirl]

From what I can make out from your post your issue lies somewhere between your video card drivers, the system being under powered, and/or spyware

 

[goodbyehester]

Yeah, sorry about the mess (the post). But how could this problem if a result of low power EXCLUSIVELY show it's face when i'm playing back videos (setting in the moment I start them) and not when playing games?
And it's definietly not spyware. Atleast not directly in any way since there was no problem before. Maybe if they (if there is any) somehow disrupted the driver switch process or have a bad way with the new ones or something, but I strongly doubt it.

Any specific and important easy to single out instance that goes active when playing back videos?

 

[Girderman]

Fairly Critical

OK, time for some true honesty.

You have to keep in mind that the people that peruse these posts are volunteers, with emphasis on "voluntary". I really think there should be some sort of guide on "How to Make a Post".

What's critical is that the "mess" was the FIRST post. This is the one that people read and decide if they want to get involved or not. Having a confused, meandering pile of text (to be honest) "red-flags" the User as someone that may be difficult to work with for various reasons.

I am saying this because, despite this I think you can still solicit some good help, but given how the thread has started this means that you are going to have to put extra effort into how you communicate your situation, and how you follow up on advice/suggestions and questions from people that are trying to help you.

From what I was able to derive from the first post, I agree that the most likely cause of your problems is your no-name Power Supply with it's low wattage rating. The reason why the "name" is important is that no Power Supply actually delivers the stated wattage, even the very good brands only get to within (say) 95% of it's rating.

Which means your 300 Watt PS might only be outputing 250 Watts.

How is it you think there may be a problem with the "12V" on the 15 Amp rail ?

However, having said all that, I fully understand your situation as being told that your Power Supply is bad means replacement, but then there is not guarantee that it will fix all your problems. May not even fix ANY of them. So you are looking for alternative explanations for the problems that do not require the expenditure of money on a solution that may not fix all (or even any) of your problems.

Understood.

So it is for this reason that I started my post as I did, as this thread may get long and complicated, which then will increase the level of responsibility for clarity in communcation upon you.

One basic thing to do is to navigate to "Start>control panel>system>hardware>device manager" and look for any yellow or red flags. Make note to enable "show hidden devices" and pay special attention to anything related to video, and report the results of that investigation here.

 

[dai]

put your specs into here
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp
based on a quality supply and add 30% to the end result
http://www.techsupportforum.com/showthread.php?t=107466
to run a hard drive without enough clear space to even defrag is asking for trouble,you will end up losing everything on it

 

[goodbyehester]

Alright, first; as mentioned I'm aware my #1 post was a mess and i'm honestly sorry and embarrassed right now. I'm not ENTIRELY sure I should be since I can't see how my inquiry is unclear in it's whole, it's admittingly too lengty and chaotic whole, but no less.

Lets start over.

Hello.

Specs:

Pentium4 Northwood [email protected] GHz
Abit IS-7
2x1024 MB DDR400 Corsair RAM
Gainward 7600GT 256MB
Hec 300w powersupply (2 years of use)

Yesterday I exchanged my Radeon 9800pro for a new 7600GT card and have experienced some problems when attemptimg to play back videos. It manifests itself in everything slowing down drastically the instant a video file is executed. No frame shows up. Everything stops to a near halt with long pauses and is not like the typical slowdown that quickly ends with a crash/total freeze if you queue up too many clicks. At one attempt the screen began going black and in less than a second come back repeatedly over a longer period of time at frequent non sporadic intervals. No screen artifacts of any kind.

Prior to upgrading I did my best to make sure my psu delievered enough power by searching the web and doing several inquiries to forums. 9 out of 10 people said 300w was sufficient. The remaining one stated that - what to me is only a stat - anything less than "18 ampere on the 12v" might not cut it, and that it was something that was "not likely to be found on a 300w PSU". One said he had 16a and 7600GT with no problems.

I too used the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator v2.0 (http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp) and came out with a OK margin with power supply adjustments (that should be equal to an additional 30%), and without adjustments 45% of the wattage unused.

I also googled Hec and found them to not be a noname brand, and neither Zalman, but something inbetween or even good.
But with that said my particular PSU has two years of service and is probably from their budget or standard line of products so it may very well be below it's original outtage.

I'm mentioning this in it's entirety since it was a foreseen possible source of instability before upgrading, and now with this directly following it just seems connected and worth being exhausted.
What speaks against it is that I've played demanding games and probably put a full load on the system without any problems or reboots. So I dont know what to make of it. My other guess is drivers or that I move a soundblaster live! soundcard and a usb2-hub two slots down to make room for the cards fan.

 

[goodbyehester]

Girderman:

the USB controllers have one crossed out device: "Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller"

device status:

"This device is disabled. (Code 22)

Click Enable Device to enable this device."

 

[Girderman]

Okay that was a bit more clear. You had a working video card, exchanged it for another and now you have video problems.

I am having difficulty trying to create a connection between a disabled USB controller and video problems. Also, assuming the last video card worked, am wondering why it wouldn't have caused problems.

However, I get suspicious of devices that are either yellow or red-flagged, and want to know why a USB controller is disabled.

Perhaps because the motherboard drivers were not installed, or out-dated drivers were installed ? Do you know why this device was (apparantly) voluntarily disabled ? What happens when you enable the device ?

In any case, re-installing the Motherboard drivers (and then updating at the ABIT support site) might be worth doing.

This was relevant:

So I did NOT uninstall the ATI drivers and use driver cleaner in safe mode in between two reboots before putting in the new card, what I did do was that I first misstakingly thought the bootup-menu was on f7 so it actually went into windows with the new card put in (recognized it as vga device and the radeon was gone I think), but I rebooted and now did a second misstake of pressing f9 and got a dialogue but some file was missing when I chose safe mode (I dont know what that was), and on the third attempt f8 and got it right. I may have uninstalled or installed something in regular windows, only the nvidia driver I think.)

Interpreting this, you intended to physically install the Video Card and then immediately boot to Safe Mode, clean the previous drivers and install the nVidia drivers before then booting to normal mode, but mistakes were made. The rest is unclear but it sounds like you may have booted to normal mode on accident, which may mean that the wrong video drivers were installed automaticly by XP ?

I have always installed the video driver software in normal mode. This all sounds like it might be a good idea, but I wonder if installing the nVidia drivers (if that's what happened) in Safe Mode might not be the (or one of the) problems.

Can't say for sure, but it seems a reasonable next step to re-do the original plan, which (I assume) would be to clean-out the traces of both the previous ATI Video Card, and whatever nVidia drivers that might be installed right now in Safe Mode, and re-run the nVidia software.

THEN, go directly to the Gainward Support site, and download and install the most recent video-update for your card.

I also Googled your Power Supply, but my opinion was not as postive as to the quality as yours seems to be, however I may be wrong. Also I looked for a "Northwood 3" CPU and the closest I could find was a 2.8 Ghz:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116215

Is this your CPU, or are you running it overclocked ? If overclocked, see if downclocking to factory spec resolves the issue. If it does, that may be an indication of inadequate power.

I am confused here:

My other guess is drivers or that I move a soundblaster live! soundcard and a usb2-hub two slots down to make room for the cards fan

This review describes the Gainward video card's cooling as "passive".

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=17860

Further, while I did find a web-site for the manufacturer "Gainward", I could find no association between this company and any of the well-known on-line electronics vendors, such as newegg, zipzoomfly, monarch, etc... which (to me) calls into question it's quality/reliability.

Finally, this may be of interest:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/f24/problem-with-gainward-7600-gs-pcx-126072.html

The suggestion to this User to provide a report of voltages and temperatures was a good one, and may help you as well.

 

[sinclair_tm]

well, i have heard of gainward cards, and they seem to be a good card from what i know. i do have to admit that your ps is lower than i like, but if you where in fact able to play bf2 without issues, then it must be alright, but i'd still think about upping it to at least a 450. as for the driver thing, i also think you are having driver issues, and even codec issues. windows handles video differently when playing a game then when playing video. if i where sitting at your computer this is what i'd do.
1. goto the device manager and uninstall all video drivers that windows is currently using for the nvidia card. then when it wants to restart to make the changes effective, just turn it off instead.
2. put the ati card back in and turn the computer back on, and let it boot into windows regularly. because you didn't uninstall the ati drivers, they should still be there, and windows will use them.
3. goto the device manager again, and uninstall all the video drivers the ati card is using. and once again, when it wants to restart, just shut it down.
4. now put the nvidia card back in and boot into windows regularly.
5. when windows detects the new video card, do not let it install any drivers!! it will default to the basic vga drivers.
6. insert the cd that came with the nvidia card and run its installer to get the gainward video drivers, now reboot.
i know, its slightly over kill, but is the only way i know on how to make sure that there are no conflicts with video card drivers. i have seen too many windows installs crippled by sloppy video driver usage.

 

[goodbyehester]

I'll look into the disabled usb-device with the error code later today. I too doubt it has anything to do with the actual problem. Probably has to do with me moving the usb2-hub card.

Concerning the reboot-misshaps when dealing with the drivers; I think I installed the Nvidia driver in normal mode. Even more so because if I remember correctly the ATI ones doesen't even allow you to install them in safe mode, so it might be as simple as that if it applies to nvidia as well.

And yes with the unintentional normal boot following the installation of the actual card in the computer it was assigned some generic vga driver - but that's normal and it can't be done differently, it just happens the instant you have booted up with the new card installed. It's even mentioned in the 7600GT manual. Maybe the detection process on the other hand could stir it up somehow with the Radeon 9800pro suddenly being absent - and hence removed from the devices in windows - and ati driver still intact? Though shouldn't it be logical that the ati drivers or registrys just lay there quiet while the generic driver runs the show with the card gone? Probably not, but in any case the driver was uninstalled and driver cleaner was run later, not to say a conflict couldn't have affected it in some other way.

I also thought it was worth a try and again uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers (exactly like how you suggested) but with no improvement. But now when i'm thinking about it - I didn't uninstall the Gainwards control panel (latest version), i'll do this first time in the morning. Though I dont think it's the problem, it's a little odd it only runs if you tell it to. No autostart. You start it and it's in the tray from there on and doesen't show up in the task manager before that, so I'd be surprised if it was constant.

I have found a positive review of a high end (nothing extremely extravagant that could be a one of sorts) Hec with a hardware tech person competent enough to test voltages saying in the introduction its known as good value and quality for the money. And some hearsay or comments if you will from people on forums. But as said, it's probably budget so it might not be valid.

I dont know for sure about the CPU, I've collected that it should be a Northwood from Everest Home Edition under the computer->overclocking section (presumably because it's valueable information to overclockers) "CPU alias: NorthWood Hyperthreading" and seeing it for example being the first 3Ghz P4 on the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator v2.0(http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp). And it's not overlocked.

That's odd, from where I'm sitting it's a popular enthusiast brand standing out with special high performing formulas often reworking stuff outside the boundaries of the chips original design and that kind of luxury deal. Recently they did a agp-version of a card normally only being available as pci-e by default for example.

Ah, there are several editions or versions of it, and that's not the one. I've got a Agp and additionally Golden sample which basically means its a premium version specifically designed to be a tad bit overclocked (in relation to a normal card with the chipset) right out of the box guaranteed to work on any system. The fan takes up the first pci-slot (the one following the agp).

Anyway, i'll try uninstalling the gainward panel tomorrow and see what that does.

edit: Thank you both for giving this some thought and time! I'll read into your post more later today sinclair_tm, need to get me some

 

[goodbyehester]

sinclair_tm: oh how I regret right now I didn't listen to myself and put in the extra (to some extent from where I was sitting just then, impossible) effort and put the 9800pro back in to uninstall. It started out as checking what needed to be moved to make room for the fan. Took me (and some help) forever and more brute force than I like to get the additional power cable out from the card. A hard-drive plug. Any ups on that if I'll give it a try and plug it back in?

Also; are you sure this is worth a try even though I did power off and go into safe mode after the normal boot and uninstall the drivers, boot, and did a driver clean on ati?

And I agree about the ps. Will upgrade to a 460w soon no matter what comes of this.

 

[goodbyehester]

Voltages (and temps) with speedfan:
http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/5391/speedfan1sc4.png
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/3723/speedfan2kc1.png

 

[dai]

post the temps this gives you to check the previous
http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/SensorsView-Download-29890.html

 

[goodbyehester]

With Sensorsviewpro:
http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/8778/sensorsviewpro1pi7.png

The +12 varies between 11,90 and 12.

 

[dai]

your voltages are ok,but your cpu temp is to high
get a can of air and blow the dust from the case
redo the paste on the cpu with some arctic silver
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm
what fans do you have as the h/d would not want to go much higher
you need a fan on the front drawing cool air in and one at the rear exhausting the hot air
this creates a cool flow of air from front to rear

 

[goodbyehester]

dai: Only a cpu-fan. Do you think a front and rear fan could be enough? I dont feel I can trust myself with applying thermal paste to the cpu.
Thank you for giving me advice on this, have not been comfortable with the cpu temp whenever happening to get a glance of it.
If I would get aux-fans, what is there to look out for? Too on cpu-fans, Thinking of replacing it with something better when I have the psu replaced.

I've been busy but will try uninstalling the gainward control panel either tonight or tomorrow.

 

[Girderman]

Do you think a front and rear fan could be enough? I dont feel I can trust myself with applying thermal paste to the cpu.

Applying AS5 is not difficult, although it requries a modicum of common sense. The most important idea to keep in mind is that you want a THIN layer across the die of the CPU. Think in terms of "BB" size.

IMO this is critical, because I have seen instances of manufacturers using a thick, foam tape as a head "conductant", and this foam will degenerate to a light brown powder over time & with heat.

Both the CPU die and the HSF should be cleaned with a Q-tip and 90% rubbing alcohol NOT acetone (nail-polish remover). I have heard reports of Users lowering CPU temps by 10 degrees or more by getting rid of what they had and replacing it with AS5. If you want REAL detailed instructions, the Arctic Silver web-site has them.

A two-fan, push-pull configuration is best..

 

[Kalim]

After you've installed the correct drivers, you should try: http://freestone-group.com/video-card-stability-test.htm

And also check everything with the DirectX by Start > Run: type dxdiag, hit Enter and then go through the testing of video, 3D etc.