ATI 550 Pro + ASUS MB could = lockup

[tevbill]

If you are considering an ATI 550 Pro tuner card, and I would consider it if you are looking for a quality card -

Please be aware that there are some reported issues of the Sapphire Theatrix 550 Pro card causing system lockups on ASUS Motherboards with Award Bios.

There is nothing more discouraging than waiting a week for your tuner card,
installing it, and having it lock up your PC

This can occur running any application that accesses the card like the software included with the card (PowerCinema) or gbpvr or any other pvr app.

I have the 550 Pro (sapphire Theatrix version) and experienced these lockups
running PowerCinema I didn't test anything after that and I put it in another PC (biostar MB) and it worked great with PCinema and gbpvr.

Upgrading the Award BIOS to the newest rev on the ASUS MB solved the problem for me and it works fine now.

The bois upgrade specifically addressed ATI compatability issues.

If you are not sure what kind of Motherboard you have just download a free utility like "PC Wizard"
http://www.cpuid.org/pcwizard.php

It will tell you what you've got.

Problem reported so far with Sapphire 550 Pro and:
ASUS A7V8X-X MB (award bois)
Asus p4p800e
possibly the ASUS Pundit-R

I'm not sure if this applies to the other versions of the 550 Pro like the ATI TV
Wonder Elite, or the Powercolor but it does apply to the Sapphire Theatrix.

[picachux]

I had a similiar issue with my Gigabyte K8N Ultra-9 (nForce 4 Ultra) motherboard, putting the card in any of the 3 pci slots would render my system unbootable. Hitting the power button would do nothing, after contacting Gigabyte they said they were aware of the issue and a week later I had a working bios update. Have u tried contacting Asus.

[tevbill]

Good to hear you got it working. The updated bois for my A7V8X-X was already available on the http://www.bios-drivers.com/drivers/247/247417.htm website so I just had to download it and flash the bios and all was well.

I also have a Gigabyte MB - not sure which bios it has and I 'd have to walk upstairs to find out so I'll do that later.

[spillerm]

I'm having a similar problem with a 550 pro card (powercolor/tul) on my dell dimension 8300 - dell motherboard and bios. I allready flashed the bios hoping that this would help - no progress. I have removed all the other PCI cards and tried the 550pro in every slot, however, the system still hangs as soon as I enable the card in device manager.

Any other thoughts about what the conflict might be?

[tevbill]

Just curious, if you run PC Wizard (free download url above) does it say your motherboard is a Dell? Or does it have the actual brand of MB or bios. I think Dell just puts their name on items they certify.

Also - What is the date of the bios you are running now? This can also be found with PC Wizard.


EDIt: also
did you "set system defaults" on the new bios (sometime called "optimized settings" in the cmos)

and also:
I found that the card seemed to lock up when the PC would use the network adaptor, can you temporarily disable or remove you network adaptor to see if that makes a difference?

finally I see that there is an updated chipst utility driver v.5.00.1012, A13 on the Dell site. Updating that might be a good idea too.

[spillerm]

PC wizard just says "dell computer corporation" for the motherboard (product 0G0728 ). Says the same for the bios manufacturer, Dell, but also says "copyright phoenix technologies". I updated the Intel chipset driver as suggested, and am going to try installing again.

I'll look into setting system defaults on the bios - I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. I'm pretty new to doing anything beyond software maintenance.

Thanks for the feedback.

[tevbill]

There should be a selection for something like "load system defaults" or "load system safe defaults"

The date on the new bios is October 1, 2004 correct?

I noticed that on the Dell site they advertise the 550 Pro card (various distributers) so they should support it. If they are responsive and you tell them you can not run the 550 Pro in you PC they really should provide an upgraded bios like picachux, the other poster, obtained.

[spillerm]

I installed chipset update, disabled network cards, and installed 550 pro. System booted fine, but as soon as the card was recognied by windows ("new hardware found ATI....") the system locked.

So, I uninstalled all ATI drivers, using ATI uninstall tool. Reinstalled only the drivers for my video card (Radeon 9800pro), disabled network cards and modem, and installed the 550pro. Without the drivers installed I could cancel the found new harware program and get into device manager. Here there were now two conflicts showing. One was "media control device" and the other was "simple PCI bus controller". The latter was also marked with a question mark.

again, if I try to install the driver the system locks, and hangs before reaching the windows screen on reboot.

Thanks for the tip on contacting dell. I also noticed that they carry the 550 pro. The only issue is that when I tried an online chat with a technician they could not help be because I bought this PC from the original dell customer. I think I just need to make a call to customer service to straighten things out. maybe they will be as helpful as you suggest.

thanks for all your help.

[tevbill]

Well, I wish I could have been more help. The only other item I found which is similar is this http://support.microsoft.com/default.asp...-us;817589
on the Microsoft website. It just says make sure you have the latest service pack (SP2) for XP which I would think you do.

I think you have done everything possible and hope Dell will help.

On another note on a Dell I use at work a support person had me disable all of PCI ports that were not being used. This was done in CMOS, I can not remember precisely the steps but there is a way to disable the unused PCI slots. This was to solve a different type of problem. Even if it worked in this case it would not be the "right "way to fix it, but a temporary fix.
I'm sure your getting tired of haveing the system lock so this might not even be worth your time.

Hope it works out with dell, please post if you resolve this.
If I find anything else out I'll post here.

[spillerm]

The card was a dud! I tested it in a friends computer, also a dell but a different model, and decided that since dell is selling this card pre-installed on current machines it was unlikey that this was a motherboard incompatibility issue. I returned the card to NewEGG, and they sent me another that appears to be working well with gbpvr - much better than the supplied cyberlink software.