wendy326
asked on
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 crashing
Here's my problem...after a series of upgrades over the weekend, my system has become very unstable. I think it's the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500 card (the AGP version), and I'm over my head on how to fix it.
I've got a PC I assembled myself about 1 1/2 years ago, with an FIC AD11 motherboard and AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz. I had a video card installed, a network card, and a modem card. I was on Windows 98.
Over the weekend, I upgraded to Win XP Pro. Due to a variety of problems, I eventually ended up completely wiping out my hard drive (on purpose) and doing a clean install, although that was later in the weekend. The second upgrade was to add some memory, going from 256MB to 384MB. No problem. I upgraded to a newer, faster CD-RW. No problem.
Then I swapped my old video card for the new ATI card. Lots of problems! I reinstalled Windows and the drivers many times. I've got all the Win XP updates from Microsoft, and I've got the latest drivers and software from ATI. I have not flashed the BIOS - I'm a little nervous about that and unsure whether it would make a difference.
The problem I'm experiencing happens only when I'm watching the TV tuner. It either crashes (often leaving the audio playing), or the system suddenly shuts down and reboots. If I'm watching it through the TV window in Internet Explorer, IE often crashes as well, followed very quickly by ATIMMC (ATI's multimedia center).
I actually thought I had it pretty stable, but in the last 24 hours I've reinstalled MS Office and my printers (HP laserjets), and now it's definitely unstable again, although not quite as bad as before (I can often watch for long periods of time before it crashes, instead of only a minute or two). Maybe I just got lucky last night and it wasn't actually fixed?
This seems like a driver problem, but if I've got all the latest updates, what else can I try? I would go back to my old video card, but I really want the TV tuner, and I don't want to spend any more money.
I am grateful for any and all suggestions.
Thanks,
Wendy
I've got a PC I assembled myself about 1 1/2 years ago, with an FIC AD11 motherboard and AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz. I had a video card installed, a network card, and a modem card. I was on Windows 98.
Over the weekend, I upgraded to Win XP Pro. Due to a variety of problems, I eventually ended up completely wiping out my hard drive (on purpose) and doing a clean install, although that was later in the weekend. The second upgrade was to add some memory, going from 256MB to 384MB. No problem. I upgraded to a newer, faster CD-RW. No problem.
Then I swapped my old video card for the new ATI card. Lots of problems! I reinstalled Windows and the drivers many times. I've got all the Win XP updates from Microsoft, and I've got the latest drivers and software from ATI. I have not flashed the BIOS - I'm a little nervous about that and unsure whether it would make a difference.
The problem I'm experiencing happens only when I'm watching the TV tuner. It either crashes (often leaving the audio playing), or the system suddenly shuts down and reboots. If I'm watching it through the TV window in Internet Explorer, IE often crashes as well, followed very quickly by ATIMMC (ATI's multimedia center).
I actually thought I had it pretty stable, but in the last 24 hours I've reinstalled MS Office and my printers (HP laserjets), and now it's definitely unstable again, although not quite as bad as before (I can often watch for long periods of time before it crashes, instead of only a minute or two). Maybe I just got lucky last night and it wasn't actually fixed?
This seems like a driver problem, but if I've got all the latest updates, what else can I try? I would go back to my old video card, but I really want the TV tuner, and I don't want to spend any more money.
I am grateful for any and all suggestions.
Thanks,
Wendy
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ASKER
Thanks for all the help...things seem to be working much better.
Here's what I did: since I actually ended up doing about 10 reinstalls over the last few days, both before and after the new hardware was installed, I think I'm pretty well covered there. I downloaded the AMD updates you mentioned, and the AGP update went fine, but the IDE update said "no AMD components found" (??) and the power management update said that Win XP does this automatically.
I checked, and I'm all set on Windows updates. The ATI download site is down, but the updates you mention are the ones I've been using, so again, I should be all set.
It seems to be better, so the AGP update must have helped. If you think I need to go back and redo anything because I didn't exactly follow the same order, please let me know.
I still get crashes in one instance: if I open Internet Explorer and click on the ATI button to open up the mini-TV window, it crashes if and only if I haven't previously opened the TV tuner. When it crashes in this case, it just gives me a message rather than rebooting my machine, so I can live with this. If I've previous opened the TV tuner, even if I've closed it prior to starting IE, it seems to work.
If you have any further suggestions, I'd appreciate it, but at this point I'm thinking maybe it's a software problem with ATI's Internet Explorer add-on. Does that sound right to you?
I'll check back later to see if you have any further suggestions (and to give myself a little more time to make sure the system really is more stable)...then I'll close this out. Thanks so much for the crystal clear instructions and excellent results!!!
Wendy
Here's what I did: since I actually ended up doing about 10 reinstalls over the last few days, both before and after the new hardware was installed, I think I'm pretty well covered there. I downloaded the AMD updates you mentioned, and the AGP update went fine, but the IDE update said "no AMD components found" (??) and the power management update said that Win XP does this automatically.
I checked, and I'm all set on Windows updates. The ATI download site is down, but the updates you mention are the ones I've been using, so again, I should be all set.
It seems to be better, so the AGP update must have helped. If you think I need to go back and redo anything because I didn't exactly follow the same order, please let me know.
I still get crashes in one instance: if I open Internet Explorer and click on the ATI button to open up the mini-TV window, it crashes if and only if I haven't previously opened the TV tuner. When it crashes in this case, it just gives me a message rather than rebooting my machine, so I can live with this. If I've previous opened the TV tuner, even if I've closed it prior to starting IE, it seems to work.
If you have any further suggestions, I'd appreciate it, but at this point I'm thinking maybe it's a software problem with ATI's Internet Explorer add-on. Does that sound right to you?
I'll check back later to see if you have any further suggestions (and to give myself a little more time to make sure the system really is more stable)...then I'll close this out. Thanks so much for the crystal clear instructions and excellent results!!!
Wendy
"ATI's Internet Explorer add-on"?? Is this something that makes it show TV in IE? I think I'd disable this (and the whole ATI toolbar thing), I had problems with it on my ATI AIW 8500DV. Sadly, the cable outlet by my PC is apparently not connected because I can't tune anything in (other than some home shopping channel, and badly at that!)
Your AD11 is a hybrid chipset that has chips from both AMD and VIA. You can download the IDE miniport driver for the 686B southbridge here:
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=66
The IDE filter driver is here:
http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/others/IDEFilter120a.zip
-dog*
Your AD11 is a hybrid chipset that has chips from both AMD and VIA. You can download the IDE miniport driver for the 686B southbridge here:
http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=66
The IDE filter driver is here:
http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/others/IDEFilter120a.zip
-dog*
ASKER
Thanks so much for all the help. Things are working much better now.
http://www.fic.com.tw/support/motherboard/bios.aspx?model_id=1
Note the differences in the BIOS revision level you're using now, you need to match the BIOS series you have to the new BIOS (re: ABAxx vs ABBxx).
Have you tried going to BIOS and choose "Load setup defaults" then make any required adjustments you had previously tweaked?
-dog*