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| 3Dfx Banshee General Troubleshooting Guide Several people have reported resolution of many of the game issues by a fresh reinstall of Windows on a reformatted drive. I mentioned the "modified" clean reinstall above under issue 2. If you want to try cleaning out old drivers first, I have posted a detailed procedure.
Unresolved Issues
If you have a solution or other unresolved issue, let me know. We got solutions here!
1. Non-MMX Cyrix CPU users get a Windows protection error after installing the card. Your drivers are VERY out of date. Get the latest 3dfx reference drivers for the Banshee or new drivers from your Banshee card maker. 2. My computer will not boot at all with the Banshee card in the system. I just get a black screen. Contact your motherboard vendor regarding an updated BIOS. Most major board vendors have websites with updated BIOS code available for download. This is particularly important with Super Socket 7 motherboards and AGP cards. The vendors have specific AGP support files, as well, that resolve a number of problems. Check your system's BIOS settings for the following options, and if found, disable them: video cache, video shadowing, byte-merge, palette snoop, de-couple (or hidden) refresh. You may also try resetting the CMOS, usually done with a For PCI cards, try a different PCI slot, if available. You motherboard should have support for PCI 2.1. This can be determined with SciSoft Sandra. Try removing all but essential devices to see if there is a low-level hardware conflict, as has been reported with some network cards. If you have just flashed the BIOS code for your Banshee and it worked before flashing, contact the vendor regarding restoring the original BIOS code or another fix. For Guillemot Maxi Gamer Phoenix owners, I have a few suggestions here. If this fails, the card is defective or simply not compatible with your system. 3. Boot screen and/or Windows splash screen show distorted colors. Disable palette snooping in motherboard BIOS setup. This is used by MPEG and other cards to read the VGA palette through the feature connector and should be disabled otherwise. It should be disabled by default, but some have reported that various screen anomalies were resolved by changing it to disabled when they found it enabled in error. 4. System locks up or kicks back to desktop when entering D3D mode, although Glide may work perfectly. There are a large number of reports that the Banshee PCI version has D3D problems with Win95 retail and Win95a (SP1). Win95 OSR2 appears to work fine, as well as Win98. It is well understood that AGP cards require OSR2 (Win95b) plus the USB update as a minimum. I have a page on this. However, this was quite a surprise to see this with a PCI card. This can be resolved in one of several ways:
Thanks to Terry (VCtheIRS) for the last solution, a most simple and curious one that does work. Most of the problems here are from old DirectX drivers from previous Voodoo cards still installed and referenced in the registry. 3Dfx has recognized this and has posted a FAQ that has a file that will remove the conflicting entries. Go here. The file mentioned in the Q&A is available here. If that does not resolve he problem, read on... Use MS's Dxdiag tool to check DirectX and D3D. It is located in the C:\Program Files\Directx\Setup folder. Here is a link to detailed instructions. Look through the black screen and other example problems, even those that do not directly apply, just to get an understanding of how Dxdiag works. Pay attention to the D3D tests and refresh rate override in the "Still stuck?" tab. If resetting the refresh rate does not fix this and the D3D test fails, then reinstall DirectX6 core. Some people report that selecting "Plug and Play Monitor" in Display Properties settings instead of the specific monitor you have fixes this up. If that fails you need to consider uninstalling any previous drivers. Look at my Purge page. Do the first few steps (run any uninstall programs for drivers, and eliminate extra display adapter listings in Safe Mode). The reinstall the Banshee drivers and DirectX6 core. If that doesn't work, then things get ugly and you need to either do a clean Win98 reinstall, "modified" clean reinstall or a driver purge, all as outlined on my Purge page There have been a few reports of DirectDraw test failures that were resolved when the Creative Labs Blaster Control monitor position and resizing control was reset to Factory default. Finally, this could be because the card has not been assigned an IRQ. Video cards require an IRQ to do bus mastering. It is not absolutely clear that the Banshee does bus mastering, although PCIList shows it doing so while Scisoft Sandra says no. Sorry, I do not have clear answer on this yet. Look at the answer to question 9, as well. Try the RAM swap. Who knows why this appears to work. If you have gone this far, and the card still fails to operate in DirectX or Direct3D, the card is defective and should be returned or exchanged. 5. Screen blanks or goes into sleep mode when booting into the Windows desktop or switching resolutions. Boot into Safe Mode. Check that the monitor selection is correct and select "default" monitor refresh rate. Reboot. Once the black screen is resolved, you may adjust the refresh rate in Windows to a more flicker-free rate as supported by your monitor. 6. Mouse cursor disappears periodically and/or becomes offset toward the bottom of the screen. Your Banshee drivers are very out of date. Get newest drivers. 7. Images displayed in Net browsers are black, partially black or corrupt. This is JPEG corruption. Resizing the screen fixes it until the next image. If I switched to 24-bit color depth, a very fast mode for the Banshee, this problem did not happen at all. Some people have reported that this fix did not work. Your Banshee drivers are very out of date. Get newest drivers. 8. When I click on the Banshee Information button, it shows no OpenGL driver loaded. This is accurate and does not indicate a problem, per se. 3Dfx has not released an OpenGL driver for the Banshee. The OpenGL2.1beta does not work with the Banshee. There are miniGL files for running Quake II and other GL games but no full GL application driver yet. 9. My computer freezes or games crash several minutes into a game or after the computer has been on for a few hours. This is most likely a sign of excessive heat build-up. Temporarily remove the computer case cover and see if improved air circulation resolves this. Also, try reducing the graphics clock settings (acceleration), if your display utilities provide that adjustment. If these adjustments resolve the problem, consider improving you computer air circulation. Many computers cases now have provisions for adding additional fans, such as one at the lower front of the case to bring in more cool air or one at the upper rear of the case to exhaust more hot air. Some Banshee card vendors have added fan equipped heat sinks to their cards. You may consider trying to implement that solution with a small 486 CPU fan screwed onto the heat sink, if there is adequate space between the Banshee and the card next to it. TennMax makes a very effective and slim Lasagna fan, but this requires removal of the existing heat sink. Contact TennMax regarding this option. I'm going to throw this in just for good measure since it keeps popping up and people claim it works: Try swapping your system RAM from the first to the second or third SIMM slot. This piece of witchcraft has appeared in various posts having to do with other graphics cards, as well. 10. You have a K6 CPU and Diamond Fusion and playing software DVD titles with Zoran SoftDVD crashes like hell. Diamond has a fix for this. The fix contains an updated version of ccad.dll file to include support for K6 CPU. This patch will also works on Diamond V550 also. Without the patch, playing DVD titles w/ Zoran SoftDVD will crash like hell. Get the patch! And here's the instructions to install the patch. 11. Guillemot cards which went dead after a BIOS flash... The official Guillemot procedure taken from a
post on the 3Dfx.com Banshee newsgroup. *This method reflashes the card with the NEW ROM. The idea is that repeating the process will cause it to work (Bill) Put your old GFX card back in the PC and check
that the PC is able to boot from a Floppy. SGRAM
*This method restores the original ROM saved as SAVE.ROM by the flash process (Bill) Like several other people on this board, I
followed the directions to update the BIOS with the ROM included with the RC4 drivers, and
ended up with a dead card. After a lot of swearing, I was able to figure out a way to get
it back. If you're fortunate enough to have access to a functioning video card, or better
yet a 2nd computer, this might work for you. 12. My AGP Banshee shows several memory resource conflicts with the PCI bridge If you are running Win95, this is an artifact and is inconsequential. This was resolved in Win98. You do not need to be concerned at all about this apparent conflict. 13. DirectX's diagnostic utility lists the Banshee drivers as uncertified. This is not a matter for concern. Certification of drivers by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) is a lengthy process, and almost all certified drivers are distributed only in MS DirectX or Windows OS releases. Rarely do vendors distribute certified drivers independently. If a card has certified drivers, there almost always are more recent uncertified versions derived from them, which should be preferred. Also, certified drivers are restricted from having what MS considers non-standard settings, such as Vertical sync or graphics and memory clock adjustments, as well as custom screen and color adjustment utilities. Certified drivers should be used when there are no newer vendor drivers. This is not the case with the Banshee. 14. My system locks if I try to alt-TAB back to the desktop from Glide games This is a known restriction with the current drivers. It will be addressed in a future release. 15. My AMD Super Socket 7 system is producing windows protection errors and IOS failure messages on boot up. Although this is not related directly to the Banshee, it has befuddled several people building new systems with Super Socket 7 motherboards or upgrading to faster K6-2 processors and Banshee cards. Recently, AMD and Microsoft cooperatively posted the fix information for this problem. It seems that with K6-2 processor run at speeds at or more than 350MHz, this error was being generated by timing issues that this fix addresses. The fix only applies to OSR2, 2.1 or 2.5. If you see this error and are running another version of Windows, contact AMD technical support. Read the bulleting and download the fix here. 16. My TV card and DVD decoder do not work with the Banshee. Your Banshee drivers are very out of date. Get newest drivers.
This page is last updated
Friday, June 09, 2006 |
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