Computer repair consult needed.

[radamanthys]

Looking for a consult from another PC PC Tech.

I have an older machine repair here that's suffering video problems. When the video card's (Nvidia FX 5200) drivers are loaded/installed, the screen 'flickers' (mostly heads towards black, especially when there's any video change) and goes on and off. Eventually it restarts. When I go into safe mode or load generic drivers, everything works rather peachy.

It's the opposite of what should happen. In real life, no drivers, no function. In this- drivers, no function; no drivers and everything's ok (other than the typical effects of having a default driver loaded, that is).

Is the card fucked or is it something in the software (meaning I fucked up)? I've tried different versions of Nvidia drivers to no avail. Unfortunately, I don't have any more working AGP cards in my stock to test that part (else I'd be further along with my diagnostic). Everything I have is either ISA or PCIe (wow, right?).

Wondered if anyone has happened to have seen this before.

Thanks!

[Bobmuhthol]

Leave it at the generic drivers or continue to experiment until you find ones that work. I had the same problem with a Radeon X800GT. I never updated the drivers beyond what came with the original CD because every time I tried the computer went to absolute shit and it took hours to repair.

[radamanthys]

Leave it at the generic drivers or continue to experiment until you find ones that work. I had the same problem with a Radeon X800GT. I never updated the drivers beyond what came with the original CD because every time I tried the computer went to absolute shit and it took hours to repair.

Yea, I'm thinking this lady probably won't use it more than grandma-style for pictures, email, web and word. I've got another computer of hers here that I haven't booted yet that has an SATA drive and PCIe card; it was her son's old machine before he headed off to Annapolis. I'll suggest she uses that as her main and use the other for either backup or secondary.

Unless she wants to drop the ~100 bucks for more RAM (Who the heck still has 512?) and a new AGP card, that is.

Unfortunately, Nvidia's download site has been wonky for about a week and won't let me really download much without a headache. If I could have just machine-gun installed different driver versions, I would have tried them all. But so far none of the Dell, Nvidia or Omega drivers work.

And FWIW, it's the same effect on both the DVI and VGA outputs simultaneously. Lends more cause to card failure. My best guess is that the drivers activate a part of the card that doesn't work, while the generics just bypass that 'feature', thus rendering the card usable. Really, under that diagnosis I can only fear a bad motherboard, and in that case (heh) the computer isn't worth fixing anyway.

[Bobmuhthol]

http://driverzone.com/device.php?id=87129

It's worth a shot if you haven't tried it yet. I don't know if I believe that the problem existing on DVI and VGA means that there is a hardware problem.

[radamanthys]

Awesome, thanks. I'll give it a shot.