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Please help! Installation problems with 5850

C

ChrisN

n00b
Joined
Oct 8, 2009
Messages
27
OK, so I finished building my new PC last week.

Specs:
Antec Nine Hundred Two case
MSI P55-GD80 mobo
8 GB Corsair Dominator RAM
Intel i5-750 CPU
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Corsair HX750 PSU
Windows 7

All these parts were brand new/straight from the box. The only part I used from my old computer was a GeForce 9600GT. I was not altogether happy reusing that card because it had been having some problems in my old computer (freezing/rebooting when I tried to use graphics intensive programs (games, etc.)).

Almost immediately upon installation of Windows 7 (on my new computer) I started to have freeze ups, reboots and BSODs. It wasn't too bad a first, so for a couple of days i didn't do much of anything about it. When I started to research the error messages on the internet I found a long standing problem between NVIDIA and MS. As I continued to research it the freezes and reboots kept coming quicker and quicker until, finally, it rebooted by then froze up when Windows tried to load. When I rebooted it started a (seemingly infinite) cycle of starting up (BIOS posted), freezing when Windows tried to start loading and then rebooting (by itself). I tried to get it to boot off of my Windows 7 DVD but the same problem kept occurring.

Fortunately earlier that day I was lucky to order a VisionTek Radeon HD 5850. Well, that arrived today and I gleefully took out the GeForce and put in the (huge!) 5850. I connected one 6-pin PCIE plug, plugged in my monitor, plugged the power back in and hit the start button.

Immediately a VERY loud high pitched whine came from the video card. It almost sounded like some kind of alarm.

Worse, I got nothing on my monitor - not even the BIOS posting.

Since I'm about ready to either cry, throw the computer out the window or start drinking heavily (or maybe all three at once!)...

...any help/suggestions would be very much appreciated.

The 5850 has plugs for 2 6-pin PCIE plugs. The (very, very skimpy) manual suggests that I only need to use both if I'm using 2 cards in crossfire. Should I connect 2 plugs anyway?

Any other suggestions, as I said, would be greatly appreciated.
 
No, you need both of them connected, even if only using a single card.

But, you probably already figured that out by now.:)
 
Yup, that fixed the video problem.

But I still can't boot into Windows nor can I even boot from the Windows 7 setup disk.

Suggestions?
 
go into bios and set performance defaults and try again. Check your boot order. Is it hitting the disk at all? Set your controller to AHCI enabled.
 
8 gigs of ram. How many strips? What speed are they rated for?

maybe try just one strip of ram to start out with. Check your bios and make sure the ram is not trying to run much higher than it's rated for.

I'm not familiar with the P55 boards, so hopefully someone can assist you with troubleshooting on that.
 
There was a BIOS option entitled "Load Fail-Safe defaults", so I clicked on that and I got into Windows repair!

So now it's in windows running "Startup repair"

Hopefully that will let me remove the old NVIDIA drivers and install the new Radeon drivers.
 
Startup repair didn't find anything, but I wasn't too worried about that.

I clicked on restart and managed to boot up into safe mode. I deleted the NVIDIA drivers and then rebooted again, this time straight into Windows.

Which it did!! Woo Hoo!!

It didn't recognize the 5850 (didn't think it would) and am now downloading the latest ATI Windows 7 64-bit drivers.
 
i recommend a completely fresh windows install when going from nvidia to ati, I got a 20% performance gain when I did so once I replaced my ultras with a 5870
 
Start with a fresh install.. first thing I would do is set your ram voltage and timings to thier correct value and then run memtest to see if you have any bad sticks of ram.
 
Here's a quick update.

The 5850 is in and working great!

I then went into my BIOS and changed from "Fail Safe" defaults to "Performance" defaults.

Everything booted and seemed to work well, but I would get occasional computer freeze-ups. There didn't seem to be any pattern to when/why it would freeze. Sometimes it would run well for hours then freeze-up, other times it would run only for a couple of minutes before it froze up. One time it froze up when Windows was loading the system-start up files.

The other strange thing is that when I rebooted, Windows never gave me any error message. I kept an eye on my CPU temps and they never went over 30 C.

I ran memtest and it found no errors.

On a lark I went back into my BIOS and changed it back to "Fail Safe" defaults. And lo and behold, I went over 24 hours without a freeze-up! (I think the longest before that was 4 to 5 hours).

So I went back to the BIOS and went through it option by option to see what the difference was between the two defaults.

The only thing I could find was in regards to Intel Turbo Boost. In "Fail Safe" it's disabled and in "Performance" it's enabled.

So now I'm searching around the internet to see if anyone else is having any problems like this.

The problem is that I don't know if it's an MSI mobo problem, an Intel CPU problem or a Windows 7 64-bit driver problem.

Any thoughts/suggestions?
 
vjcsmoke said:
If it works with fail safe enabled, why not leave it like that?
Click to expand...
Well that's certainly something I would have no problem doing.

It's just that everything is brand new on this computer and I'd like to have it running as well as it can.
 
I think you had the same issue I had, is the error atikmdag.sys? Sometimes a motherboard bios update will work,even if it's the same bios version! Give that a try and see.

Reflash your vid card and mobo just before you RMA, hey what do you have to lose.
 
look at the settings Fail Safe is enabling, all Failsafe is , is a preset for certain bios settings.

load failsafe and then go through your bios menus, once you see what it is changing you can trouble shoot which setting is the actual problem.
 
H-street said:
look at the settings Fail Safe is enabling, all Failsafe is , is a preset for certain bios settings.

load failsafe and then go through your bios menus, once you see what it is changing you can trouble shoot which setting is the actual problem.
Click to expand...

As I mentioned earlier, the only difference I could find is "Intel Turbo Boost."
 
1) check for a bios update

2) using any kind of built in overclocking utility in the BIOS itself with no knowledge of how to overclock is risky at best. That may be what your "performance" settings are trying to do and it may be making your system unstable.

3) Educate yourself on using the settings on the motherboard and on overclocking in general for your given platform, which in your case would be P55/i5-750

4) Google is your friend
 
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