[paolo]

I had the dreaded ati2dvag BSOD last week and after following suggestions on this forum, was eventually able to get my PC working again. Since then, however, it's happened again (each time while running a graphics-intensive game) and now I am unable to boot into anything other than safe mode. Whenever I restart my PC, there are vertical lines down the initial screen and broken vertical stripes down the screen once it has booted up in safe mode.

Some detail: I have a Dell machine running Windows XP. It's about 5 years old. The ati2dvag dll is dated 2005, so is not a new version. Updating the driver using Catalyst did not find a newer version. Reinstalling the driver has no impact on the problem.

I read somewhere (possibly here) that vertical lines on the start-up screen suggest a hardware problem. Looking inside my PC, nothing appears to have come loose or to be damaged, but I can't tell for sure. There was quite a lot of dust in the fan inlet. I am wondering whether it could be that the fan is no longer working and the graphics card has overheated, but again I can't tell by looking whether this is the case. How would I be able to test this? One last thing: assuming the graphics card is the large component with the fins on (I don't know what it should look like), it doesn't look as though it can be removed like the RAM or other components can - it doesn't have the clips on each side that snap open - so if it comes to replacing the graphics card, I don't know whether that is possible.

Hopefully it's not going to be necessary to replace the whole machine. Any assistance and guidance you can offer will be very welcome. Thanks.

[Advertisements]

Hi -
What is the exact model of your Dell computer -

Thank You -

[noknojon]

Hi -
What is the exact model of your Dell computer -

Thank You -

[paolo]

Dell Dimension DXC051, Pentium 4 CPU, 3GHz with 512M RAM, running XP Media Center Edition v2002 SP3.

I have also tried turning off hardware acceleration, by the way, and that didn't help.

One curious thing I forgot to mention - every time I start my PC up, the remaining disk space goes down by somewhere between 500M and 1G. It's dropped to 1.5G now. I had 10G free out of 69.7G before I encountered this trouble. Virus perhaps? I'm running a full scan now to check.

[noknojon]

Hi -
Open Defrag (Start > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter) Click Analyze.
On the top line it will show how much Free Space you have left.
Go back to System tools and click on Disk Cleanup, I have all boxes except the bottom one ticked, Click OK > and OK to the next box also.
Please tell me how much is there, and while there click on Defrag and let it run if you have over 15% free space.

Thank You -

[noknojon]

Extra information on ati2dvag.dll error for you -
The ati2dvag.dll error will generally appear on a blue screen, which shows that it's so serious that Windows simply cannot proceed with the current computing session. The exact details that appear differ from each computer as they are unique in their build and operating system.

This error is generally caused by the way in which Windows needs to use it on your system. It's part of the ATI graphics driver, which your PC needs to use to help it load up all the graphics on your PC. Because this driver is one of the most important parts of the entire system, any problems that occur inside it will actually cause your PC to either restart or just stop working. The ati2dvag.dll error will often arise when your system has an outdated version of the ati2dvag.dll file (because of an outdated driver), and will consequently be unable to read the file that it requires to run.

You can typically fix ati2dvag.dll errors by updating your system & drivers, as well as removing viruses from your system.

Keep your Antivirus program fully updated daily - -

Edited by noknojon, 07 January 2012 - 03:08 AM.

[paolo]

Disk cleanup freed up about 50M, and CCleaner a further 87M. I now have 1.59M disk space free, which is only 2% and so not enough to run the defragmenter safely.

Can you advise the best place to update my drivers, please? There is a link to Hardware Helper below your last posting, but this requires registration and payment. Is there somewhere I can obtain updated drivers for free? Thanks.

By the way, a full scan using McAfee (which is up to date) did not show up any viruses.

Edited by paolo, 07 January 2012 - 04:42 AM.

[noknojon]

There is a link to Hardware Helper below your last posting,

If this is advertising only on this site, we do not always support the use of these programs, including registry optimisers and similar programs.
The money they pay is the way of keeping this site open, as we are without a product too sell, unlike Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, or any Antivirus company.

Can you go to Add / Remove in Control Panel to see if there are any programs that are not used on a regular basis, and delete them.
Also just click on Start > All Programs and see if you can delete any programs from there with their uninstaller.
You should never bring your free space below 10% or 15% or these problems occur.
Was the Defrag area mainly RED or half BLUE when you looked or analyzed it ??
II am hesitant to get you to download more programs while you only have 2% free space at this time.
A Repair Install is one option to remove some programs, but I prefer you to do it yourself first -

Thank You -
EDIT -
This is a Free DLL download Site
http://support.amd.c...SupportHub.aspx And this is a link to AMD that is your ati2dvag.dll maker.

Edited by noknojon, 07 January 2012 - 06:11 PM.

[noknojon]

Can you start in Normal Mode yet, or is there still problems that you are having ?? Are you uninstalling items or looking for more space still??
This Link shows how to double your RAM from 512MB to 1 full G and only $45 -
If you shop around you will find it cheaper than this.
Your normal Standard Memory = 512MB but you can double this very easy and cheaper than the price listed here.

[Ztruker]

The DXC051 is a Dimension 5150C. The drivers for it are here: Dell Dimension 5150C/DXC051

Try booting to the Advanced Boot Options menu by pressing F8 during boot.
Select

Enable low resolution video (640 × 480)

Starts Windows using your current video driver and using low resolution and refresh rate settings. You can use this mode to reset your display settings.

See if it will boot normally. If yes, download the ATI driver from the above link and see if it fixes the problem. You can download this from any computer and put it on a flash drive then install it in the failing one after setting low res mode (if that works).

You may need both of the ATI drivers, but do the 128MB Radeon X600 SE first and reboot, see what happens.

[paolo]

Thank you, I'll try the drivers later on today. I think I need to uninstall the old ones first, is that right? Is it sufficient to uninstall them from Device Manager or is there anything else I need to do?

Regarding the memory problem - the amount of free disk space started dropping of its own accord when the driver problem happened. Each time I restart my machine the amount of free disk space goes down. I'll uninstall some things I no longer need but I'm curious to know why this should be happening.

As for RAM, is there any particular reason I should increase it to 1G? Is the amount of RAM part of the cause of the driver and disk space problems, or is increasing it just a good thing to do generally?

I'll post an update later today after I've got the driver updates. Many thanks for your help so far.

[paolo]

noknojon - thanks for your feedback too. I'll reply later on today.

[noknojon]

If you follow the link from Ztruker and go to Drivers and Downloads it explains things for you -

Your question Re: adding RAM - As you only have 512MB of RAM installed means that you do not have much space to install and run programs.
As you say, there is only 2% free space, and this is not enough space to do a basic Defrag, or run some other items.

This now means that your system is virtually overloaded at this time, so you will not be able to do any actions soon,
Unless you can uninstall at least 20% of your programs, your system will continue to fail and we will not be able to help you.

We wish to keep helping if you, and we will if you just work with us -

Thank You -

[paolo]

Here's an update on where I am so far.

* By uninstalling unwanted programs and deleting old files, I've managed to get my free disk space up to 12.9G.

* The defragger shows mostly blue but a fair number of fragmented (red) files. I have not yet defragmented my machine.

* I can boot my machine up into VGA mode.

* I downloaded installed the ATI driver update. My display adapters are now 128MB ATI RADEON X600 SE and 128MB ATI RADEON X600 SE Secondary (previously these were X600 and X600 SE). Despite this, rebooting into Windows normally still causes the same BSOD. I can still boot up into VGA mode.

So this has not fixed the problem. Are there other driver updates from that site that I need to install? I didn't notice a second ATI driver there. Thanks.

[Ztruker]

Try the 2nd ATI driver then ifthis is the TV Tuner you have.

ATI-Driver R147994.EXE (9MB)
Optional
2/15/2007 8.33.7, A07 (xp32)
Applies to:
TVT2 Wonder Elite - Internal Single Analog NTSC TV Tuner

[paolo]

OK, how can I check whether this is the TV tuner I have? Will this show up somewhere in Device Manager?