System reboots from ATI card? help...

[msimon7]

hello.
I'm having an insane problem with my PC setup - mainly used for capture. I have the ATI AIW 9600XT and a new PC set up (ASUS P4P800-E, P4 3.2, 1GB RAM). the system will just reboot at various times (mainly during capture) and sometimes upon loading up windows after a crash it will just reboot again and then eventually load. was running Win2K and decided to try WinXP to see if this was some 2K issue with the 9600 card. loaded up a fresh copy of XP Pro with SP2, only loaded ATI parts needed to get MMC to work and also added Corel Draw and Photoshop, just to have a couple of other big apps on the PC for tests. - so the PC is very clean at this point. have run monitoring tool that came with the board and temperature, fan speed, voltage all running correctly and within proper range.
since loading the only task i've performed was capturing VHS video via the MMC (have version 9.02). not every time, but pretty frequenly the system will just crash MMC and/or reboot. I'm almost positive that the card is the issue as i've read a handful of posts on the VoodooFiles.net ATI forums with others having the exact same problem, unfortunately there were no solutions posted.
this is just insane, the card is only 4 months old and the PC is only 1 month old. have been following LordSmurf's capture guides and all has been excellent.....except for these crashes
if anyone as any suggestions at all i would really appreciate it. i really don't know what to do as i don't think i can return the ATI card now.
these forums have been incredibly helpful in the past and i really hope someone has an idea for me to try now. if i can provide any more information/details please just let me know
thank you. marc

[deh707]

dvdshrink.

[Des]

Make sure the card is seated in the AGP slot correctly. Almost in but not all the way in can cause it to seem like it's working fine but then flake out.

Also make sure you have the correct drivers installed and MMC. You might also want to try using a previous version.

Make sure you have updated the drivers for the Intel 865PE bridge. I had a Soyo MB with VIA chipset (for AMD) that only liked my ATI 9000 card every other wednesday. Sometimes it would boot fine and work great. Other times the system would boot but no video after post. Other times the system would reboot itself.
I solved the problem by getting an ASUS board with the n-videa controller.
Hope something here helps.
You can also try kicking it.

--dES

[Richard_G]

I had the same problem of random reboots in my system with a AIW Radeon 7500 card fitted. The Microsoft online crash analysis always pointed to the display drivers. This only started to happen after I had installed later drivers and MMC 9. I uninstalled these and went back to MMC 8.9 and matching XP drivers and the problem has been cured totally.

[thor300]

Had similar problems with 9200SE card in mATX housing, bigger powersupply fixed the problem.

[chicola]

With my experience, I would bet on the power supply.

But, the MMC regression is easier to test so begin with it.

[msimon7]

hello. thank you all for your replies. here is what more i can tell you, please let me know what you think. the power supply is an Enermax and is 460 watts, also only 1 month old. from what i understand that should be enough power to push whatever i want. the monitoring tool that came with the ASUS board shows that the voltage is running smoothly, but i'm not an expert with this so i'm not sure....
I will double check the seating of the card on the board. would have thought that either you have a connection or not, but will definitely check
i will also try running MMC 8.9 to see if that helps. will probably wipe out the system and restart fresh. i'm thinking of staying with the latest DAO/MDAC and Windows Encoder 9 - you think think this is OK to do? with 8.9 you can also download the previous version of DAO/MDAC. how about capture drivers? should I back that down also.
thanks again for the replies and further feedback would really be appreciated! thank goodness for this place!

[chicola]

For a reboot, you only need a voltage spike. And that can't be seen on the monitoring tool.

Post your results after the downgrading and we'll see how it went. Take your time. Don't rush in upgrading again without having used intensively the PC for a few days!

[msimon7]

that's what i thought about the voltage too. when looking at it all seems normal, but without staring at it constantly how would one ever see the "spike" if there is one? i may look to see if there is a logging feature with that tool. I am almost tempted to hire an electrician to come out and test our power at my house as well as check the grounds.
i really think it is the video card as i've seen too many posts with similar issues. man this really sucks. really like the ATI AIW, but if it kills my system then i may be shopping elsewhere.
i should know within a day if the downgrade to 8.9 fixes it, usually within a few capture sessions it will fail. odd thing is that it could fail within 10 minutes or do a full hour and a half and be perfect. i just hope that i don't get a false sense of resolution if it doesn't fail for a few days.
thanks again for the replies, they are truly appreciated. as always, any other tips are welcome. off to the land of rebuild this evening after work.... (thankfully the XP install is a breeze)

[msimon7]

just to follow up on what I did... and seems to be working.
I wiped the PC out again, formatted, loaded XP Pro SP2, this time i used the 8.9 ATI drivers and 8.1 MDAC/DAO (both were previously 9). knock on wood everything has been stable so far. I've run about 5 test captures of a 90 minute VHS tape and the last 2 I added heavy sharpen videosoap at 25%, just to see if i could push it even further to make it crash. also purposly didn't reboot before next capture - again just trying to push it as much as possible and it still performed as it should
so my lesson learned, was use the 8.9 drivers for my AIW 9600XT and ASUS P4P800-E motherboard.
hopefully this will help someone else out there and thank you all for your tips and suggestions. don't think i could have done this without you guys.