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Very odd graphics problem - anyone any ideas ?

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Carol Haynes:
I have been trying to troubleshoot this with the graphics card manufacturer for a while but they seem stumped as do ASUS who made my mobo.

The situation is this -

2 x BFG GeForce 7300 GT OC 256Mb PCIe
ASUS A8N32-SLI mobo
AMD Athlon64 X2 4600+ CPU
Windows XP SP2 Pro (32-bit)

(some of you may notice my system specs have changed already - the other bits have been put to good use with a cheap DFI motherboard to build a friend a new system!)

Everything works fine for normal use and I run the two cards in SLI mode.

The only problem I have is that if when run a task such as CHKDSK or PrefectDisk which requires to reboot and run at boot time.

Normally utilities that run at boot time appear after the Windows logo on a blue screen and show their progress but on my system the screen goes blank and when they complete my system starts normally. The processes execute but I an't see progress or any errors that occur.

If I disable SLI and then disable the card in the second PCIe slot in Device Manager it works fine.

BFG suggested either a car was not working properly or the sencond PCIe slot wasn't operating properly. To test this I removed both cards and then insterted each card as a single card and tried them both in both PCIe slots. Bothe cards in both slots work fine and I don't get the boot-time display problem.

I have tried different GeForce driver versions with no changes.

It seems to me to be a driver issue during windows startup. (possibly the data is being output onto a second monitor and since there isn't one plugged in I can't see anything - but if I swap my monitor to the second card I don't see anything when both cards are enabled).

Anyone got any ideas at all how to troubleshoot this. ASUS and BFG tech support both seem totally stumped and both say they have no previous record of this issue. BFG have suggested RMAing the cards but since they seem to work fine I am not sure what this would achieve (apart from not having a working system for a while).

nudone:
can't really offer any help but i get this kind of problem with my graphics cards when i've got them set up for tv out.

it's understandable when i've ONLY got tv out set on a card but i've had cards do it when they just felt like doing it - never figured out why - i just forgot about it.

i hope you find the solution but i wouldn't be surprised if there isn't an answer - that works.

Carol Haynes:
That's a relief I thought I was alone ;)

At least I have a workaround that works but it is a bit of a nuisance with multiple reboots disabling SLI and a graphics card before setting up the boot time op and then re-eneabling the card and SLI afterwards!

MerleOne:
Do you get the same behaviour when you boot from a linux live CD, such as Mandriva CD
ftp://ftp.free.fr/mirrors/ftp.mandriva.com/MandrivaLinux/official/iso/2007.0/One/mandriva-one-2007-free-kde.iso ?

If yes, that means it's a BIOS or harware problem. If no, it's probably a Windows driver problem.  Just my 2 cents...

Carol Haynes:
I haven't tried Mandriva (good suggestion) but when I boot from an Acronis CD (with TrueImage and DiskDirector) there are no problems with graphics and both use a CD based Linux distro to start up.

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