4850 + Pencil Volt Mod = Blue Screen on Loading Display Driver

[korruptedONE]

So I decided to do the pencil volt mod to a 4850 I picked up to play with. I can load safe mode fine, and if I uninstall my display drivers, Windows loads fine. I only did the vGPU mod, not vMEM.

However, after installing the driver and rebooting, I get a display driver blue screen once the Windows loading bar is finished, and it complains about my display driver being stuck in an infinite loop. Does this make any sense to anyone? I also had issues modding my BIOS voltages which would result in blue screens on boot/display driver not responding in games. It seems really weird that I can load safe mode fine but it's the display driver that crashes the OS. I have uninstalled/reinstalled drivers and used Driver Cleaner.

Basically I'm wondering if I killed the card or if it just hates more voltage? Of course I'll try and erase the pencil marks when I get home today but I just wondered what you guys thought. Maybe I got a lemon of a card in terms of voltage but that seems awfully strange considering the results most people have with them.

Vista x64
650 Watt Coolermaster PS, 54 amps 12V
Rest of specs un-important; system ran fine until vGPU mod

 

[Jim Morbid]

As with most advice - Try uninstalling the drivers (CC them) and reinstall them.
Try reinstall your windows.
Try a previous version of Catalyst

Failing that, if you can try a different PCI-E slot or a different graphics card or your card in a friends PC.

Normally helps to single out the problem.

JM

 

[korruptedONE]

Guess I didn't clarify enough; I've done the driver uninstall/reinstall. That's step one, as always.

I'm on Cat 8.10 for my driver rev; dunno why my driver version would matter for a hard mod but that's another thing to try, I guess. 8.9s and 8.11 RC1 betas are worth a shot, but I doubt I'll get anywhere. Same with a Windows reinstall.

Could it be powerplay not playing nice with the vmod?

 

[Jim Morbid]

Guess I was reading to quickly my bad...

 

[jason4207]

If you've done any kind of BIOS mod it can be difficult getting the newer drivers to work. I was fine w/ 8.7's for a while, but a recent urge challenged me to get the 8.10's working.

Also, make sure only 1 monitor is hooked up to the card. The 8.10's and dual-monitors weren't playing nicely for me.

I used the BIOS at post 675 here. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192411&page=27

Fresh install of XP-32-SP3. Installed mobo drivers, and then imaged my drive b/c I knew there were going to be issues. 4 hours later I got it working.

 

[korruptedONE]

Jim: Hehe quite alright; I was kinda vague in how I worded it so I edited my post to clarify.

Jason: thanks for the info. Maybe it indeed is the driver rev not liking the voltage or powerplay not playing nice with the upped GPU voltage. I had so much trouble with the BIOS mod I figured screw it I'll try the pencil mod and leave the software on the card alone. Imagine my surprise when I got the exact same behavior, lol!

 

[jason4207]

So, you have the stock BIOS on there now?

How did the pencil mod go? Are you sure you're not trying to drive the voltage too high?

 

[korruptedONE]

Yes I went back to the stock BIOS before I tried the pencil mod, as I fought with it too much and never came up with a working card.

For the pencil mod, I found there is both a resistor you can shade, as well as two contact points that you can create a connection between, in order to up the voltage. According to Techpowerup.com, which is where I got the diagrams of what to shade, the first mod (resistor) shouldn't allow you to push too much voltage through, and that's the one that I did. I just find it really strange that my driver is causing the issue. I'd figure it'd at least let me into Windows, since it lets me into safe mode and lets me into normal Windows when I don't have a driver installed.

My plan is to try and erase the marks since it didn't "just work" like I had expected it to. My only guess is Powerplay being the culprit, unless that's not handled by the driver and is a BIOS thing instead.

 

[jason4207]

Wait, so are you using a DMM? If not, I highly recommend you erase everything, and don't mess w/ it. There is a good chance you are sending too much voltage. I played around w/ penciling, and it was very difficult to get it where I wanted it even while using my DMM to measure resistance changes. I never could get the resistor to pencil right, but I did get those 2 points penciled, but it was difficult to get dialed in right. I just took out my soldering iron, and did it right.

With the pencil mod you want to measure resistance before and after you pencil to make sure you are in a good range. Then you fire it up, and check the voltage. It sounds like your missing some VERY important steps if you're doing this blind.

 

[korruptedONE]

Wait, so are you using a DMM? If not, I highly recommend you erase everything, and don't mess w/ it. There is a good chance you are sending too much voltage. I played around w/ penciling, and it was very difficult to get it where I wanted it even while using my DMM to measure resistance changes. I never could get the resistor to pencil right, but I did get those 2 points penciled, but it was difficult to get dialed in right. I just took out my soldering iron, and did it right.

With the pencil mod you want to measure resistance before and after you pencil to make sure you are in a good range. Then you fire it up, and check the voltage. It sounds like your missing some VERY important steps if you're doing this blind.

I have a DMM I defintely made sure I paid attention to my resists as I was making my marks. Hopefully I don't sound like a noob; I guess I just leave things out because I assume people assume things (confused? lol). For instance most posts I read, if people don't specify that they've already tried uninstalling drivers w/ Driver Cleaner or what have you, but are posting on the forums, I assume they've already done that and didn't get anywhere. So I figure people will give me the benefit of the doubt but since TONS of people come for help that haven't done the simple stuff, like clean drivers properly, I should know better, eh?

I just find it really strange that it's the display driver causing me issues. I don't disagree that I may have ran too much voltage through it, but I don't think that is the case based on what I read about the pencil mod and the specific resistor I shaded (see here: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/voltmods/151/2) . I do really blame the driver though, because I think I am going to have to reinstall windows now. After my latest round of reinstalling my drivers, in my Add/Remove programs lists, I have like 8 different ATI software packages listed, that say things like ati-control-static, etc, and while I can select them, I can't uninstall them. Nor can I clean them. Furthermore, Catalyst Control Center won't install. Fails every time. So I take that back, it likely isn't the driver, it's CCC.

Silly software interfering with my hard mods.....I'm tempted to do my first mod with the soldering iron on this card since it wasn't too expensive and I'm mostly just messing around with it, but after trying so much with the BIOS and the pencil, I dunno if it'll even take at this point.

 

[jason4207]

OK. Much better!

I never had any luck w/ that resistor for penciling. The other point across the PCB worked well, though.

I had a lot of issues w/ getting drivers for this card installed as well. Just the other day I did a complete XP re-install, and it still took me about 4 hours to get the ATI drivers installed right. I had similar issues w/ CCC not installing.

Have you had any nVidia cards installed on your current OS install? Can you possibly do an OS re-install (I know it sucks, but I had no luck until I did so).

What I did this last go-round was to image my drive right before I installed the ATI drivers, so that I would always have a fresh install of XP if something went wrong.

 

[funnyperson1]

Well if you have the DMM why not measure VGPU to see if its higher or lower than you expected? The measure points are shown on the first page of the techPowerUp article and they look easy to access with the case on its side.