I have an Nvidia Geforce MX100-200 on the AGP slot and 2 ATI Radeon 9000 . A couple of days ago I started having more and more problems with the AGP card not being recognized at startup. This used to happen only occasionally and was solved by turning the PC off and back on 30 min later. Using" restart" only the AGP would work and I would get an error message about the ATI drivers . These past few days, none of the monitors would initialize on restart, sometimes on booting as well. I don't even know if Windows starts in that case. The computer is on but the peripherals do not respond. First I tried to switch to initialize PCI adapter first in BIOS, it made no difference. Only the ATI monitors would initialize, if I restarted no monitors at all. I have now uninstalled Nview and the ATI drivers since I could not see the AGP card in device manager after installing the Nvdia drivers alone . So now all my display drivers are uninstalled but I still can't see the AGP card only the two ATI cards are recognized . How do I reinstall the Nvidia drivers and get that to work before installing the ATI drivers - which I think is teh sequence I used during the first installation?
ATI cards have done this for as long as I can remember. They are very picky about what they work with. What you might want to do is to first download the latest drivers for each of your cards and put them on the harddrive ready to install. Next, remove all cards but the nVidia AGP. Install the nVidia and run the driver files. Make sure it is working well. Now remove the nVidia card and install the ATI cards one at a time running the driver for each as needed. Once those are up and running, reinsert the nVidia card and start the machine again. This should work but there is a good chance it will not and you will have to sacrifice the nVidia for another ATI. I have always avoided ATI. I have always had trouble with them talking to other hardware on the same machine. I will only mix Matrox with nVidia. I prefer nVidia cards over anything else for trading. The driver is universal and very customizable with no problems when running the same driver across different types of nVidia cards. Good luck.
Simple problem, simple solution. ATI and NVidia don't live well together. I'm even surprised that you were able to make your stuff work at all. Many boxes will just lock up on you if you try the mix-and-match ATI/NVidia stunt Get rid of one or the other and uninstall all drivers from the card(s) you get rid of (this is important). Video cards are cheap. Since you have 2 ATI already I'd say get rid of the NVidia and put an ATI in its place. I use both kinds in different machines, mostly because ATI 7000 VE dual-heads are so cheap ($35 approx). Everything else being equal, I prefer NVidia because their drivers are stable and without problems. ATI often requires troubleshooting of one kind or another.
thanks for your help. I may have fixed the problem (temporarily at least) I installed ATI drivers then unplugged and plugged the nVIDIA right back. Good guess Windows recognized "new hardware" on reboot then I reinstalled Nview. All monitors worked perfect on reboot , I don't even get the usual ATI desktop has to close error messaGE. Will see how it goes tomorrow and after. Very weird. Won't buy ATI by Prophet anymore for sure
Glad it worked. You might want to burn that computer in for a couple of hours using one of the many test products available free online. Run the video test continuously and turn off your monitors for a couple of hours. If it locks up, then expect some surprises and keep you broker's trader's desk number handy.