[KGHN]

Dell Dimension 2400, PCI-only Dell WinXPpro machine, service tag H018K71. I've been using onboard video interface. Now we need hardware T&L for a game. Bought a used PCI Radeon 7000 with 64M of RAM. I get a picture fine in Safe Mode, but on a normal boot with the Radeon driver installed (I've tried two versions from the ATI website), as soon as the XP splash screen ends, the picture goes wonky and freezes. The display shows a repeating pattern related in color to what was being displayed at the time of the switchover. I have two monitors set up at the moment, one on the onboard IBM chipset video and one on the Radeon. The BIOS has two settings, AUTO and ONBOARD. With AUTO, XP seems to recognize that there are two outputs, but the Radeon one just isn't right yet. Suggestions?

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My daughter got No One Lives Forever 2 from her sister as a gift. NOLF2 requires a 32Mb hardware T&L capable video interface.

The onboard video on her Dell Dimension 2400 is an Intel 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV, not suitable. The Dell Dimension 2400 has 3 PCI slots, no AGP or PCI-Express. It's got an Intel Celeron 2.6 GHz processor. This machine has two IDE optical drives, an IDE HD, and a floppy. We are currently running PS/2 mouse and keyboard. The O/S is Windows XP Pro SP2 with DirectX9.0c.

The motherboard is a D845GLVAL socket 478 ATX, BIOS version A05. The machine's Dell service tag is H018K71 - per Dell, it shipped in May of 2005. I bought it used in Oct 2008 from a "recycled computers" store. I have a Dell XP restore CD for it.

The machine's BIOS has only two video-related settings: AGP aperature size (no AGP slot on this machine) and video: "Onboard" or "Auto". There is no PCI-only or onboard-disabled setting. I have a PDF of a manual for a similar motherboard, but the BIOS is different and there are no video-related jumper options described. BIOS is set to AUTO video.

Per Wikipedia, all Radeons can do hardware T&L.

I bought a used PCI-interface ATI Radeon board from a nice gentleman on eBay. Here's what I wrote down from the board before we installed it:
ATI Radeon Graphics © 2001 N625
PN 109-85500-00 (silkscreened on the board itself, Radeon 7000 32M per 'net research)
there are several (4?) hynix 151A chips on the board
on a sticker, s/n 160205 008300 RV100 DDR 64MB, p/n 1028550300 055133 (Radeon 7000 64M per 'net research, per Wikipedia, R100 is the 7000 series.)

We installed the Radeon in the PCI slot closest to the CPU, then there's an empty slot for good air circulation, then an NIC card in the last slot. (We have a card because we were using BNC ethernet. Haven't tried the onboard NIC RJ45 even though we switched to Cat5e and a router.)

I put a monitor on each video port, since I had tried unsuccessfully to install a different used Radeon in this same machine a while back (no video ever out of that one; it was a bad board), and that had helped me then.

I downloaded the driver package recommended by the ATI/AMD website, 6-11-pre-r300_xp-2k_dd_ccc_wdm_38185.exe, and installed it.

Initially, I got a picture (on both monitors) fine in Safe Mode, but on a normal boot with the Radeon driver installed, as soon as the XP splash screen ended, the Radeon's picture went wonky and froze. The display showed a static low-resolution repeating pattern related in color to what was being displayed at the time of the switchover. On the onboard video's screen, the ATI Catalyst center was unpopulated - no wizards or options listed.

The solution: right-click an empty area of the desktop, choose Properties. The Settings tab should show both video/monitor pairs. The Radeon can't be configured (Apply doesn't work) until it's activated. Activate the Radeon by checking its "extend the desktop onto this monitor" box. Configure it. Restart to make sure all is well, then de-activate the onboard port by unchecking its "extend the desktop onto this monitor" box.

We are up and running through the Radeon, Hot D..og. The ATI Catalyst center works now, too. Start/Run DxDiag - all the DirectX diagnostics seem to run fine.

I think the unusual difficulty with this Dimension 2400 + PCI Radeon video project is that the machine's BIOS has no way to force WinXP to *only* use the PCI video board. That force has to happen in XP's own configuration. Hooking up two monitors during the installation/configuration helped me tremendously; I hate swapping a monitor cable when the machine is on.

(Note: Also unusual is that ATI says "uninstall any old ATI video driver before installing this Radeon driver". Their installation instructions were worth reading.)

Call this one SOLVED.

(The NOLF2 install is still unhappy, asking for DirectX 8.1. That's another topic.)

[KGHN]

My daughter got No One Lives Forever 2 from her sister as a gift. NOLF2 requires a 32Mb hardware T&L capable video interface.

The onboard video on her Dell Dimension 2400 is an Intel 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV, not suitable. The Dell Dimension 2400 has 3 PCI slots, no AGP or PCI-Express. It's got an Intel Celeron 2.6 GHz processor. This machine has two IDE optical drives, an IDE HD, and a floppy. We are currently running PS/2 mouse and keyboard. The O/S is Windows XP Pro SP2 with DirectX9.0c.

The motherboard is a D845GLVAL socket 478 ATX, BIOS version A05. The machine's Dell service tag is H018K71 - per Dell, it shipped in May of 2005. I bought it used in Oct 2008 from a "recycled computers" store. I have a Dell XP restore CD for it.

The machine's BIOS has only two video-related settings: AGP aperature size (no AGP slot on this machine) and video: "Onboard" or "Auto". There is no PCI-only or onboard-disabled setting. I have a PDF of a manual for a similar motherboard, but the BIOS is different and there are no video-related jumper options described. BIOS is set to AUTO video.

Per Wikipedia, all Radeons can do hardware T&L.

I bought a used PCI-interface ATI Radeon board from a nice gentleman on eBay. Here's what I wrote down from the board before we installed it:
ATI Radeon Graphics © 2001 N625
PN 109-85500-00 (silkscreened on the board itself, Radeon 7000 32M per 'net research)
there are several (4?) hynix 151A chips on the board
on a sticker, s/n 160205 008300 RV100 DDR 64MB, p/n 1028550300 055133 (Radeon 7000 64M per 'net research, per Wikipedia, R100 is the 7000 series.)

We installed the Radeon in the PCI slot closest to the CPU, then there's an empty slot for good air circulation, then an NIC card in the last slot. (We have a card because we were using BNC ethernet. Haven't tried the onboard NIC RJ45 even though we switched to Cat5e and a router.)

I put a monitor on each video port, since I had tried unsuccessfully to install a different used Radeon in this same machine a while back (no video ever out of that one; it was a bad board), and that had helped me then.

I downloaded the driver package recommended by the ATI/AMD website, 6-11-pre-r300_xp-2k_dd_ccc_wdm_38185.exe, and installed it.

Initially, I got a picture (on both monitors) fine in Safe Mode, but on a normal boot with the Radeon driver installed, as soon as the XP splash screen ended, the Radeon's picture went wonky and froze. The display showed a static low-resolution repeating pattern related in color to what was being displayed at the time of the switchover. On the onboard video's screen, the ATI Catalyst center was unpopulated - no wizards or options listed.

The solution: right-click an empty area of the desktop, choose Properties. The Settings tab should show both video/monitor pairs. The Radeon can't be configured (Apply doesn't work) until it's activated. Activate the Radeon by checking its "extend the desktop onto this monitor" box. Configure it. Restart to make sure all is well, then de-activate the onboard port by unchecking its "extend the desktop onto this monitor" box.

We are up and running through the Radeon, Hot D..og. The ATI Catalyst center works now, too. Start/Run DxDiag - all the DirectX diagnostics seem to run fine.

I think the unusual difficulty with this Dimension 2400 + PCI Radeon video project is that the machine's BIOS has no way to force WinXP to *only* use the PCI video board. That force has to happen in XP's own configuration. Hooking up two monitors during the installation/configuration helped me tremendously; I hate swapping a monitor cable when the machine is on.

(Note: Also unusual is that ATI says "uninstall any old ATI video driver before installing this Radeon driver". Their installation instructions were worth reading.)

Call this one SOLVED.

(The NOLF2 install is still unhappy, asking for DirectX 8.1. That's another topic.)

[KGHN]

Re the same Dell Dimension 2400: Looks like the ATI Radeon X1300 is the most modern video board for a PCI-only computer. I tried two, the first 'open box' one didn't work right (interference stripes) so I returned it. Now, the new X1300 works beautifully, runs Thief 3, which wouldn't install with the onboard video. BIOS legacy video is set to AUTO. I followed the User Manual instructions (on the installation CD). XP would go blank on the new board's monitor about the time it got to the login. I then used two monitors during installation setup, one on the onboard port (where the login appeared) and one on the new board. Once I had WinXP convinced to disable the onboard port (Control Panel / System / Hardward / Device Manager) and restarted, I could remove the monitor on the onboard port.