GeForce2 MX

[Marcia Townsend]

Can anybody help please?

Four weeks ago I bought (from EYO of course, the most reliable and best priced computer supplier around!) the following video card:


Aopen PA256MX2 GeForce2 MX 32MB with TV out.

It was part of a big upgrade, operating system, processor, memory, etc., and I did it the way the book said, bit by bit. So I put in the new operating system, and worked that for a week, then the memory, worked it for a week, then the processor, and worked that for a week, then the video card......and struck a problem. I am getting constant noise from any mouse movement. I've looked on the Aopen and NVidia sites, and on the Gigabyte site (motherboard) and on loads of tech forums, and today found one reference to noise problems with the GeForce2 MX and certain motherboards (not named). Has anyone else out there had problems with this card? Any advice please? I've tried three mouses, two serial and one USB, all the same result, the only way to stop the noise is unplug the speakers. Turning down the volume doesn't make any difference.

Hope to hear from someone..
Regards,
Marcia

[dilligaf]

Sounds like your mouse & your sound card maybe sharing IRQ's. Does this motherboard have onboard sound?. Right mouse click the "My Computer" icon on your desk top, select properties & see if there are any yellow exclamation marks along side any devices on the list. Your new video card may have pinched an IRQ from either your sound device or your mouse.

[Marcia Townsend]

Thanks very much for the suggestion; the new video card did pinch the IRQ from the sound card to start with. Although there were no yellow exclamation marks and Windows said there were no conflicts I didn't like the idea of both being on the same IRQ so I forced them apart, but the noise continues.

Anything else from anyone?

[nsu]

Have you tried to move the sound card to a different PCI slot? Some slots are hardwired to share IRQ with others. Generally the first PCI slot next to the AGP will use the same IRQ by design. Try to avoid using the first slot. The slot 4 or 5 normally share the same IRQ as well as hardwired together with for instance the on board USB port.:)

[Marcia Townsend]

Yes, we have tried the sound card in each of the PCI slots except 5; didn't use that one because of the shared ISA slot. That ISA slot has a second sound card in it, and we have tried removing that card altogether in case that was the problem, but still no luck.

[q9]

If you go to Device Manager => System Devices=>PCI Bus
does it give you a message like "Unable to read IRQ table" or something like that? (My memory has gone today. I had a shave with shampoo and washed my hair with shaving cream. Don't ask)

[Marcia Townsend]

No, it just says the usual "This device is working properly".

Someone from EYO has suggested that I might try upgrading the bios; anyone any advice on that? We're generally quite happy to give most things a go when it comes to fiddling with computers, but we haven't looked at flashing the bios because it seems to be one of those things everyone says can cause real problems. According to the Gigabyte (motherboard) website there is an upgrade available for our board, but it shouldn't be necessary for running our processor (1000MHz Celeron). EYO's other suggestion was that we might need to upgrade the processor, but I don't think that is a realistic option at this time.

[Marcia Townsend]

Following my post of fifteen minutes ago,

Is there a message icon which means I am blushing with embarrasment?

What the EYO guy actually said was "buy a more powerful PSU" NOT "buy a more powerful processor". I should read more slowly. It was only when replying to him that I realised what he was actually saying. I couldn't understand why he was telling me to buy another processor when I only got the last one a month ago.........

In any event, the PSU is a 300W, so an upgrade shouldn't be needed.

[mastablasta]

I think you could try updating your BIOS. A couple of months ago I got a new (USB) mouse and in Windows 2000 the whole OS would freeze after using the computer for about 30mins. I tried absolutely everything to try to get it to work (turn off video acceleration, mouse acceleration etc), then tried upgrading the BIOS, and it worked. I have had no problems since.

[q9]

It seems a post I made the other day didn't make it.

When you installed windows on this machine, did you just let windows install itself or did you start the computer with cdrom support and then start setup using (from the win9x directory on the cdrom) the command

setup /p j

???

This forces the installing of the ACPI support in windows and often fixes weird problems like this.

[Marcia Townsend]

Thanks for the further responses.

We have reformatted the hard drive, and reinstalled the OS (XP Home), and updated from websites all device drivers, VIA 4 in 1 service pack and so on. Which didn't seem to make any difference at all.

So as a final resort, following the EYO advice, and that from Mastablasta, I flashed the bios with the latest update, and the problem is a lot better.

The mouse noise is still there, but it isn't as loud as before; I think, given that I certainly like the performance of the new video card, I can probably live with it as it is. Hopefully it will stay fairly quiet.

Australian readers might also like to know that EYO would have taken the video card back, although it was a system conflict and probably not a fault with the card, which backs up my opinion of their good service.

Thanks to each for your help, and one last question for q9. I shall be reinstalling XP again within the next couple of weeks, do you know if your setup /p j thing works to force ACPI support in XP as well as Windows 9x?

[q9]

Oh you are using XP. The /p j switch is for 98/ME. As far as I know XP should be like Win2000 in that it sorts everything out by itself. I can't confirm that at the moment because I don't have any XP, and to be honest I don't think I ever will. I would imagine XP would be ACPI enabled by default as it was a relatively new thing in 98.

You might want to look in BIOS and see if assign IRQ to VGA is enabled and general stuff like that.

[alan norman]

It was me who deleted a Post in error earlier in the week. Still getting the hang of this. Problem was I knew I had deleted the wrong one but I couldn't retrieve it. I suspect it was yours.

Once again sorry.

Alan

Moderator.

[q9]

I'll forgive you, this time.;)

I thought I saw it after I posted it, then I came home and it had gone. Oh well at least I know I wasn't imagining it.