[sallen]

Hi,

I have a Radeon 9200 series graphics card and I frequently recieve the following messages:

"VPU recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands"

This is followed by

"VPU Recover was unable to fully recover from a hardware deadlock, and has switched to software rendering. To restore hardware rendering you must restart your computer. Do you want to restart you computer now?"

If I don't restart, my system runs slowly. It then sometimes crashes with either a black screen as if the monitor has been switched off or a blue screen of death.

If I restart after a crash I sometimes can a "your system has recovered from a serious error" message and when I send the error report it says "error caused by device driver"

I have tried:
1. Changing the driver to newer and older versions. With some of the drivers it doesn't happen as often, but it does still happen.

2. Reducing the AGP multiplier to x4 instead of x8.

3. Swicthing off VPU recover, but I get the black screen described above instead of the errors described at the beginning.

Can anyone help?? I have had these problems on and off for over a year now.

Stephen

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Try the latest drivers from here

https://support.ati....ge&folderID=293

If you have broadband and .net framework, go for the with catalyst control centre 33.8MB

[Retired Tech]

Try the latest drivers from here

https://support.ati....ge&folderID=293

If you have broadband and .net framework, go for the with catalyst control centre 33.8MB

[nixx]

delete all drivers and related software, take out the card, and do the following:
try in another comp
try another card
clean the card and redo everything.

Nixx

[sallen]

Hi,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Before I install anything, I have some of questions:
1. How do I know if I have the .net framework installed?

2. If I have haven't got it isntalled, is it worth installing and how do I install it?

3. If I haven't got it installed and it isn't worth installing which driver should I go for instead of the Catalyst Control Center?

Thanks again

[Retired Tech]

1. Click start then control panel, add / remove, put a tick in show updates, look for microsoft .net framework, or go to Microsoft Update and it will be an optional update, you would need to go back twice for further updates to this

2. You will need it to install all the parts of the software download for the ATI Card, so that's a judgement call. Catalyst and .Net Framework are installed on mine

3. The alternative would be the one above the catalyst,- with control panel 25.2MB

[sallen]

Hi,

I've still got the same problem, but now it only seems to happen when I'm online.

My system is also more stable after the error messages appear.

Is there anything else I can try or is this the best I'll get?

Thanks again
Stephen

[Retired Tech]

Boot the PC, keep tapping F8 to get options, choose safe mode with networking, make sure the firewall an AV are on, then go online for a while to see if anything shows up, such as pages not loading

What firewall have you got, is thw XP one off if you have a third party one

You should continue until you get to the bottom of this, as you should be able to go online, or anything else without the graphics throwing a wobbly

[sallen]

I haven't had the chance to tryr the safe mode networking yet, although I will in the next couple of days.

I have never had a page not load at all - I just get the error sometimes.

I have the XP firewall disabled and I am using Norton Internet Security 2005.

The main reason that I've sent this post is that I have received the following error message twice today. Once was after the usual two errors and the other time it just appeared.

Title: Windows - Display Driver Stopped Responding
Message: The ati2dvag display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot your system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot your machine a dailog will be displayed giving you the chance to upload data about this failure to Microsoft.

Have you come across this error before? If you have is it more serious that the other errors?

Also, when I tried to restart my system froze at the Windows is restarting screen and when I send the error to Microsoft the crash analysis said that it was a problem with the graphics card driver

[Retired Tech]

Check you have 5.9 drivers from ATI

There is an option to turn this feature off, though you need to do this after updating the drivers if you want / need to

[sallen]

It looks like it's back to the usual problems after a couple of days of (relative) peace.

To confirm I have installed version 5.9 of the driver.

I've had the VPU recover errors twice tonight, the first being after the usual 30-40 mins after I switch my PC on and the second almost immediately after I restarted following the error.

Are any of these ideas viable:
1. Changing back to an earlier version of the driver? Which would you recommend?

2. Would switching the AGP to x4 instead of x8 improve the stabilty? I'm not playing games at the moment so it doesn't matter if my system is a bit slower as long as it is more stable.

3. As a drastic final measure, would it be a good idea to change my card. If it is, what would be a good alternative card (e.g a more stable one) to the Radeon 9200 and approx. how much would it cost?

Can you suggest any other things that might be worth trying
Thanks once again for you help
Stephen

[Retired Tech]

Try this

a. Right click anywhere on your desktop

b. Left click on the ATI Catalyst® Control Center option

c. Click the View Menu Option

d. Select the Advanced View Option (notice the list of items under Graphics Settings

e. Select the VPU Recover option under Graphic Settings

f. Ensure that Enable VPU Recover is selected

g. Optional Step: ATI can help determine the cause of a system crash. Ensure that “Prepare an error report if VPU Recover is activated, for submission to ATI Technologies” is also checked.

h. Click Apply

Prepare the report and send it to them

You can try the older versions here after sending the report for 5.9 to ATI

http://www.filehippo...i_catalyst.html

below download link, go to 5.6 and work up if needed

[sallen]

I am fairing a little better - well relatively better at least.

I first tried the version 5.4 or 5.5 (not sure which) but it wasn't much better.

I'm currently using 5.6 and although I get the VPU recover error after approx 30 mins my system seems to run ok afterwards.

I've received an e-mail containign the prices for three Geforce cards. The details are below:
PNY GEFORCE FX 5500 128MB DDR PCI - GRAPHICS CARD £59.99
PNY GEFORCE FX 6200 256MB DDR 8X AGP GRAPHICS CARD £59.99 was £89.99
PNY GEFORCE FX 5500 256MB APG 8X GRAPHICS CARD £69.99

I was wondering if you know anything about these particular cards? Are these prices are reasonable? and more importantly for myself are these cards more reliable than the Radeon 9200 series.

In principle I don't want to spends any money on my system, but if £60-£70 maximum will stop my problems then I will.

Thanks again for your advice.

[Retired Tech]

The 256MB FX 5500 is 59:50 inc delivery here

http://www.savastore...uct_id=10279098

I would ask the question on performance in the games forum as they will have more knowledge of the cards running under load

If you can cope with it, contact ATI to tell them turning VPU recover off does not make any difference, it could be the card has a problem

I'm wondering about it still doing this regardless of the card setting

Perhaps running a repair install of XP will help eliminate it being something else

http://www.geekstogo...p?showtopic=138

Your data and settings will remain but you would need to get updates, including SP2 from Microsoft Update