Screen Flashes Black When Xp Desktop Loads and during high periods of I/O activity.

Hi, Im wondering if anyone out there is experiencing the same problems as me on this one. Here are my system specs:

ECS L7VTA PCB v1.1 (using bios 1.7j)
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton)
512Mb DDR 333
Nvidia GeForce 440Mx (with latest drivers)
Via hyperion 4 in 1 chipset (with latest v4.53 drivers)
DirectX 9.0c
Xp Sp1


Overview of the problem:
When XP reaches the desktop, the screen flashes, as if changing to an incompatible resolution, then returns back to the normal desktop, the same happens when I right click on the Nvidia settings icon in the task tray or when the system is under heavy I/O.

In addition to this i think that this is having a 'knock on' effect on my other drivers, eg errors keep cropping up in Cmuda.sys (CMedia AC97 audio using newst drivers also), and asyncmac.sys (one of the windows RAS drivers), and Ndis.sys (network driver).

At present I am at a loss, any help will me much appreciated.

Supercomputeruk
LVL 2
SupercomputerukAsked:
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gfdosConnect With a Mentor Commented:
I've seen this before --- try this:

in the bios look for a setting for "Assign IRQ to VGA".... try setting it to no.....
this may let windows assign the IRQ rather than the BIOS...
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lexicon_dominusConnect With a Mentor Commented:
Hello Supercomputeruk;
Did you try uninstalling and removing the vga drivers, restarting the windows and re-installing them.
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SupercomputerukAuthor Commented:
I have done a clean install of every driver on my system, recently I have reinstalled XP with a fresh set of drivers, it works with no problems with the VGA drivers, but as soon  as i install the Nvidia drivers it goes haywire, however i might now try not installing the Via chipset drivers yet, but that is not something i class as a solution.
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lexicon_dominusConnect With a Mentor Commented:
Hello;
Installing latest nvidia drivers sometimes cause these kind of problems. You can try installing a previous version to see if the problem persists.
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SupercomputerukAuthor Commented:
ive tried all the versions of the Nvidia drivers from 44_xxxx_xxxx to current day. Still no better
hmm
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nobusConnect With a Mentor Commented:
There are no yellow exclamation marks in Device manager? If not try another vga card, even a PCI will do, to check out the issue
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SupercomputerukAuthor Commented:
no exclamation mark in Devmgmt.msc, and works fine with new VGA card, (albeit 2Mb Pci card), this leads me to think that VIA and Nvidia chipsets conflict. Howeverm, in msinfo32 under hardware resources and conflicts and sharing:

I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF      VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF      NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440
IRQ 16      NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440
IRQ 16      Lucent Win Modem
Memory Address 0xD0000000-0xDFFFFFFF      VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
Memory Address 0xD0000000-0xDFFFFFFF      NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440
Memory Address 0xE0000000-0xE1FFFFFF      VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
Memory Address 0xE0000000-0xE1FFFFFF      NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF      PCI bus
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF      VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF      NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB      VIA CPU to AGP2.0/AGP3.0 Controller
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB      NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440

There is a lot of sharing between the via agp chipset and the Nvidia card, I am begining to believe that this could be the source of the problem, but cannot change it in devmgmt.msc.
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lexicon_dominusConnect With a Mentor Commented:
Hello SupercomputerUk;
There seem to be a IRQ Conflict between Nvidia VGA Card and Modem... Maybe you disable the modem... ?
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SupercomputerukAuthor Commented:
Ill give that a whirl, ill have to go into the bios, to reassign it an IRQ mainly because Xp wont let me change it.
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SupercomputerukAuthor Commented:
Right, ok why didnt I think of that one lol, it seems to work but, the modem is no use to me being disabled. Is there any way of forcing Xp to let me change the IRQ of the modem because the change this setting button is greyed out??
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lexicon_dominusConnect With a Mentor Commented:
Maybe you can reassign PCI port IRQ from BIOS ?
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SupercomputerukAuthor Commented:
Tried, it only has the option for Pci/Reserved and ive enabled manual options as well in the bios, still no result, if i change the location of the modem on the board will it change the IRQ, im not sure about this one but im goin to try it if it might pose as a solution.
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SupercomputerukAuthor Commented:
good point ill give that a try right now, im feeling very optimistic as ive just got my gcse results back :D.
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SupercomputerukAuthor Commented:
right, it worked, but eventually i shelled out for a new card but thanks for all the input, ill distribute the points accordingly.
Regards
Supercomputeruk
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