2 Computer Questions

At what point in your boot sequence does it freeze?

It sounds somewhat like a problem I had in Win2000 Pro. I suggest makeing sure all of your drivers are up-to-date and M$ certified. Do you also keep your install up-to-date? Do you run a up-to-date antivirus program and firewall? Did this behavior begin after the installation of a certain program or other possible cause?

The second question is a different story. Assuming you are using the standard ATI Windows driver, those options are changeable in the menu thing(might be advanced menu). However, those options could be disabled by some OEM manufacturers on OEM custom motherboards. How are you checking if these settings are disabled?

What kind of motherboard do you have?

You may have a cold boot in which case could be solved by evaluating your power supply and/or raising the vcore. It may also be related to the graphics card.

Hey,
Thanks for the replies,
It looks liked it freezes right as it finishes loading the windows desktop. usually all of the icons on shortcuts don't finish loading when it freezes.
My motherboard is Gigabyte K8-Triton nForce3 something or other, (I'm at school right now, can't check)

As for the drivers and windows update stuff, I don't have an internet connection on my own PC, for a host of reasons. so I haven't done any windows updates or anything, (can I download the updates to a disk, then install them on my PC?)

As for the ATI settings, I was using the ATI control panel, (found on the advanced tab of display setting) and I made a slight error, it was the AGP Bus speed that was disabled/set to 0x, when I enable it and move it up to 4X (that's the max setting) it restarts, and the settings do not remain.

Gotta go to class, thanks for the help
Svenjamin

Does your motherboard have an option for loading fail-safe settings? If so, I'd switch over to that, and then try booting again. If your system boots, then continue to adjust and change the settings on the board to your liking. That's what I did when i had a problem like that.

Burn graphic drivers on CD and update them. When you are into it update your mainboard drivers, and sound drivers as well. I asume you PC boots up into safe mode without problem. BTW check clock of your processor, if you didn't overclocked it by accident, and check your CPU cooler.

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As for the ATI settings, I was using the ATI control panel, (found on the advanced tab of display setting) and I made a slight error, it was the AGP Bus speed that was disabled/set to 0x, when I enable it and move it up to 4X (that's the max setting) it restarts, and the settings do not remain.

Not to insult your intelegence or anything, but are you sure your card is AGP. The 9550 Radeon is avalable in a PCI version which could explain this problem. If it is AGP, another question is are you the root/administrator account? If you are not this could also explain why the settings are not saved.

You may want to see if starting in Windows Safe Mode does not freezes when you boot. If it does not, it means it is a problem with a program loading insead of a problem in windows.

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Does your motherboard have an option for loading fail-safe settings? If so, I'd switch over to that, and then try booting again.

Seconded, the fail save mode in your BIOS is another good thing to try.

well, smartgart will take down the settings if it notices instability, so if you trying to make it 4x is causing it to be unstable it will lower it to 0. however i believe this option doesn't even exist if you have pci or pci-e cards. just make sure you have fastwrite off. and make sure you have agp 4x enabled in the bios.
however, do check to make sure you don't have a pci card.

I have experienced a similar situation twice before. Once was because of a CPU voltage problem, the other time I have no idea, but I suspect it was due to voltage as well. Regardless, when I powered on the system it would hang, but sometimes it'd get into windows before hanging. Either way, the only thing that worked was a hard reset. It may not be helpful as you seem to be having issues with AGP, but it never hurts to check your other hardware as well (memory, etc...)

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I suggest makeing sure all of your drivers are up-to-date and M$ certified.

While this is always good advice, it's MS (or Microsoft), not M$.

Hey,
thanks for the replies,
As for the freezing problem, My CPU was overclocked, and when I put it back to normal, the freezing problem seemed to go away, it hasn't frozen again since, (its been restarted about 10 times) so I think that that problem is solved, thanks for the help.

Now for my graphics card,
Don't worry about insulting my intelligence, I won't get offended because I really don't know all that much about computer hardware, but yes, I am sure that my graphics card is an AGP card. I also am sure that I am on the administrator account. Yesterday I noticed on my Motherboard Box, that it only says AGP 8X, not AGP 4X/8X, could this have something to do with it?

Thanks for the help,
Svenjamin

Generally speaking, if your motherboard says "AGP x8" it means it can run AGP x8/x4. Rarely a motherboard does not support the x4 but that does not often happen. I am glad you cleared up the freezing on boot problem but this videocard problem is annoying me. It once happened to me on an older Dell [ :( ], but it seemingly magically disapeared when I reformatted for a completely different issue. This I would attribute to the updated drivers probably. I would then also suggest that you update your Video Drivers. Also make sure to clean off your older drivers and reboot first. Are you also using up-to-date drivers for your motherboard?

One thing though could you be running a motherboard with a PCI-E and an AGP x8 special thing that isn't a real AGPx8 slot. This would mean you would have a nVidia nForce 4 instead of a nForce 3. Is this possible? If so, the AGP x8 slot on those setups have some freaky limitations it seems.

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Original post by Svenjamin Hey, thanks for the replies, As for the freezing problem, My CPU was overclocked, and when I put it back to normal, the freezing problem seemed to go away, it hasn't frozen again since, (its been restarted about 10 times) so I think that that problem is solved, thanks for the help.

so you had your system overclocked...? you would think that would be the first thing you would check.... but ok glad that problem is fixed.
as for your agp problem, as i said, make sure you have your agp properly set within the bios, some bios's have an option for agp speed.
but if you really think that smartgart is reseting your agp speed, go to start, run, type in smartgart, turn everything on and your agp speed to where you want. then click ok and then go to start, run, type in msconfig, then under services look for smartgart and uncheck it. then restart and it should stay at agp 4x if it is smartgart turning it down.