Hello, everyone.
I installed Vista about two weeks ago and could not get anything but the
framebuffer driver to work (i.e. the default driver when specific hardware
ennumeration is not available). The specifics of my hardware are below.
Vista correctly identified my card as the ATI Radeo 9550 128MB that it is,
however, the device manager complained of a 'problem' and disabled the driver
(the nefarious Code 43 I've been reading so much... and learning so little...
about). The ATI provided driver failed to work, either, giving the same error.
I was able to get the driver to load, however, after tweaking a BIOS
setting. By changing "Graphic win size" from 16 to 128, I was able to get the
ATI driver to load successfully. I wish I could say that that was the end and
we were talking about a happy story. Unfortunately...
After rebooting and setting the adapter to 1024x800x32@75hz - about the
limit of my hardware - I decided I'd try and load the slick new interface. In
"System Properties" or whatever they're calling it now, my previous index
score of 1 had been replaced by a message saying that I needed to retest to
determine my correct score, now that my video card was working correctly. I
hit the button, and, vola! ... BSOD! You can imagine my excitement, what
going from 800x600x32@60hz on a CPU driven experience to 1024x800x32@75hz to
view repeated BSOD's.
After a few reboots, trying to tweak my system settings, back to Code 43 and
the framebuffer driver. Who knows? I've continued to work on my BIOS stuff,
trying to see if a memory timing issue or something might be to blame. I
don't mind that ATI and Microsoft aren't making a huge rush to fix this
apparently occasional problem, but I would certainly appreciate it if they
would admit that there is a problem and give a timetable for its resolve. Oh,
well.
I will continue tweaking BIOS. Wish me luck, and I'll post again if I find
some.
System:
ECS K7S5A board
AMD Athlon 1800
768 MB of off-brand RAM (I'm worried that this might be my problem -- see
technical note below)
ATI Radeon 9550 LE(?) by Sapphire, 128MB, AGPx4
Gateway E700B 17" CRT
Tehnical note:
As I write above, the BIOS setting that initially enabled the ATI driver was
"Graphic win size." It had been set to 16, methinks. Various documentation
around the web said that this setting had something to do about texture
storage in system RAM if the GPU dedicated RAM on-card became full. I had
tried setting the size to 128 and then 256 several times -- the highest
settings available on my particular system -- but Windows went BSOD (not
without a message - this was the page in non-page area or something to that
effect - I appologize for not remembering). After some more dicking around, I
was able to get Vista to boot.
However, this is when I went BSOD without any text -- when the video driver
loaded correctly, and I had made it to my desired video mode, then asked for
a new index rating. Bomb.
I'm turning my RAM timing stuff all the way down... done that, and still no
dice. Now I'm going to turn my core bus speeds down to 100mhz -- the 1800+
system is a 133mhz system bus speed. Now I'm running 100, and we'll see if
this works.
I'll keep everyone in the know.