New 7900GS - issues. *please read*

** Sorry for the long post. This is driving me nuts! **

Hi all - I upgrade my video card last night (evga 7900GS KO) and had some
wierd conflicts. This is the gist of it after I physically installed the card:
1)BIOS Checksum Error --- I thought this meant that a file was corrupted...not sure.
2)Checked BIOS - looked ok -- loaded WinXP
3)Installed NVidia driver (v90.24 I believe) and control panel app.

**Ran 3dmark01 successfully**
**Ran 3dmark05 and it crashed near the end (card was NOT overheating @ ~59C) -- it gave me that whole windows message "Do you want to send feedback yes/no". The NVidia control panel app crashed and gave me this message also.

I was scratching my head. Ran Oblivion (HD lighting, 1400x900 HIGH Settings) and foreground (dirt, grass, etc) was PURPLE! wtf is that about? It looked like my guy was tripping on acid or something...Exited out of the game.

4)Noticed that internet connection was down, so I opened device manager.
5)Saw the yellow ?'s next to "PCI Bridge" and "SMI Bus Devices" --- solved this by making them rollback to previous drivers. Not sure why this happened...driver conflict from video card? Wierd b/c I had a 7600GS in the same pci-e slot until about a week ago. Not even totally sure what those devices pertain to.
6)Noticed that "Ethernet" controller in the device manager was not working. Tried to rollback to previous driver and it said there wasn't one to resort to. Tried using the new hardware wizard as it kept popping up like I had just added something...it couldn't find a driver on the Windows CD and it couldn't connect to the internet to try and find one. My "Windows" CD is just a system restore disk as it's a Gateway comp, although the mb, cpu and RAM are all that remain of the original comp.
7)Inserted SBC install disk (we have SBC yahoo dsl) to try and reinstall the ethernet device....besides being ridiculously slow, it didn't work.

What do you think? I hope it's not an incompatibility with my mb, but that wouldn't be a real expensive fix as I could probably pick up a decent used socket 939 mb for under $50.
My psu can't be going bad...well, I guess it could be, but it's a good one and I've had it less than a year. I wonder if the ethernet port of the mb got nuked? Or whether it's a wierd IRQ conflict, but why didn't I have issues with the 7600GS which previously used this same slot w/ the same Nforce driver?
Thanks for reading and hopefully giving me some ideas. I got too frustrated last night and just went to bed.

-Ryan

crossed_wires said:

** Sorry for the long post. This is driving me nuts! **

Hi all - I upgrade my video card last night (evga 7900GS KO) and had some
wierd conflicts or something....not sure, but that's why I'm asking.
All I did when the comp was apart was insert the card into the only
existing pci-e16 slot and I removed the modem from one of the PCI sots,
as I don't use it -- LOL.

Immediately after starting the machine, I had a BIOS - checksum error.
Doesn't this mean that a file on the drive is corrupted? Or does it mean
the BIOS on the card is acting up?

I checked the BIOS and didn't see anything out of the ordinary (onboard
sound is disabled, onboard video has no option). I proceeded to let WinXP
load up and installed the card via the driver CD (just driver and NVidia
control panel app).
I then ran 3dmark01 which was fine (18,500 or so) and 3dmark05 and it
crashed right near the end.
I ran Oblivion and it was ok, except that all the grass and dirt in the
foreground was PURPLE! LOL. It was like my guy was on acid or
something...

In additon to this, somehow when the video card drivers were installing
(my best guess) my ethernet device stopped working (dsl). I checked
device manager and it had one of those big yellow ?'s on the PCI Bridge
and SMI Bus devices. I made it revert to previous working driver and
those issues went away, but the ethernet device was still not working so
I couldn't connect to the internet to try and find an answer to all
this...

I know these may seem like separate issues, but I assure you that all I
did was install the video card driver (v90.24 - ie, latest one off nvidia
site) and NVidia control app. Oh, did I mention at one point that the
NVidia app crashed on me? LOL. I was really scratching my head and
finally had to go to bed and give up for the night.
Any ideas? I'm hoping it's not a incompatibility with the card to my mb
or something like that.

-Ryan

Click to expand...

Well I read it all. Don't have time to reply now, because that's a lot of issues, but I will later.

Not sure if this would help you, but when I looked closely at some of the black text in windows (mostly on file/edit/view - type menus), I see a little bit of a color bleed, at least I think that's what it is. Instead of being a crisp black, some of it has kind of a purple-ish haze to it and seems a little fuzzy.
Running windows in 1400x900 (32-bit color, 60Hz refresh)

Doing a google search, I see people with compatibility problems with 7900GS cards who have Asus mb's (not me) and Antec psu's(I have)....

Probably an IRQ conflict with the yellow things,


and your powersupply might me capping out.

I edited the original post for (hopefully) better clarity.

I guess my main issues are the (1)purple-ish grass in Oblivion -- no idea why it's doing that
(2)and the stupid devices uninstalling themselves after video card was installed. This resulted in the ethernet adapter to uninstall and I can't seem to get it to reinstall.

As a troubleshooting idea, should I take the card out and try getting it to work? If that doesn't work, just backup stuff and reinstall via Gateway restore disk? Unfortunately, I don't have a full install CD of Windows XP. Sure wish I did.

eh, I'm probably going to just reinstall from the Windows XP restore CD. That is, unless I can figure out how to reinstall the ethernet adapter without an actual real windows cd. This restore thing doesn't seem to work, or the new hardware wizard can't find the files anywhere...

Start fresh.

Use driver cleaner and get rid of EVERYTHING.
Then reinstall the latest nvidia drivers right off the website

If that fails, reseat the graphics card in the PCI-E slot.

I have the latest nvidia driver on my computer fortunately. I try to keep the latest drivers for my devices on my comp, in case this happens. The main problem being, in the midst of this, my internet connection decided to stop working. Somehow the ethernet adapter uninstalled itself :confused
This is after (or at the same time) that the PCI bridge and SMI Bus decided to uninstall as indicated by the yellow ? in device manager. I managed to get those to rollback to the old/previous drivers, but not the ethernet adapter. Any ideas on that? If it even matters, the ethernet adapter is integrated into the mb. I think I have an actual ethernet card, which I may try out tonight...

Ok. Problem solved, at least with the ethernet driver not being installed. My wife busted out an apps and drivers CD that we were given with the comp. I didn't even know we had that. Well, it worked