Developer Forum

My laptop freezes and I get the message

The driver ati2dvag for the display device \Device\Video0
got stuck in an infinite loop.

Sometimes the system crashes every 5 minutes and sometimes
it goes for days just fine. I don't have to be working for
the computer to crash. I have the Radeon 7500 video card.
Does anybody have any advice as to how to solve this
problem. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the old driver
many times and it doesn't help. There is no new driver
available that will work with my motherboard, or so I am
told.

Sofie" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > wrote in message
news:019001c3aecb$20ff4420$ XXXX@XXXXX.COM ...

I have had the infinite loop problem on my PC with nvidia Ti4200 and I can
tell you that your notebook memory is most likely to be bad unless you can
enable APIC mode in your notebooks BIOS for a full explanation see below;

Before infinite loop my setup was;

Athlon XP 1700 o/c XP 2000 @ 133mhz fsb
Crucial 256MB PC2100
MICRON 256MB PC2100
MSI Geforce 4 Ti4200 8X
ABIT AT7 MAX KT333

In the ever increasing desire to o/c further I decided to sell both the
PC2100 and buy a stick of 512MB PC2700 as I knew the system was not stable
running at 166mhz fsb (XP 2400 oc) and thought it becuase of the RAM not
being rated for 166fsb.

When I got the PC2700 I immediately started running it at 166mhz FSB but it
was still not stable I thought at the higher speeds my CPU wasn`t being
cooled enough (my cooler wasnt rated for XP 2400) and bought a Thermaltake
Heatsink/Fan to replace the cheap coolermaster I was running - I was pretty
sure this would give me the stability at 166fsb 2ghz while I was waiting for
it to arrive I decided to push up the fsb to see what the max fsb the PC2700
RAM would POST at - I got it up to 185fsb and it POSTED a couple of times
then it could no more - mysterious I thought.

So I gave up on the high fsb and went back to 133mhz fsb and XP 2000 but I
started getting spontaneous reboots did some reading on google and ended up
restoring my software build from backup the spontaneous reboots were gone no
permanent damage or so I thought.

The CPU Cooler arrived next day and I was still unable to get stability at
166fsb and now I started noticing the infinite loop error but as I`d not had
stability at 166fsb before I figured it was just the same stability problem
I`d always had only at 166fsb. However when I went back down to 133fsb and
XP 2000 the infinite loop persisted I started to get worried maybe it was
the CPU I went back down to default clock XP 1700 and still I had the
infinite loop problem.

Now my system was not stable at any CPU / FSB clock! Then I read about the
infinite loop problem on here and other places and thought what if I`d
damaged my PSU somehow during my attempts at high fsb overclock as I seemed
to recall getting more problems since then - spontaneous reboots which I got
rid off but then the infinite loop seemed to arrive back then.

I replaced the Q-TEC 550W with a brand new Q-TEC 400W as I knew I`d
originally had stability with the Q-TEC 550W in the system when it was new
so I still had faith in the brand and figured I had damaged it somehow. Well
the 400W made no difference and I still had the infinite loop.

So then I went on a long journey of discovery involving days/weeks of
testing with fresh builds and Prime 95 untill finally I swapped the memory
with a stick of PC2100 in my other PC and the infinite loop was gone. Then
it dawned on me that I had damaged the memory by running at 185mhz fsb not
the PSU.

I sent the PC2700 ram back for replacement and and am now running a stable
XP 2000 system - its still unstable at 166fsb but I don`t have the infinite
loop anymore. So for me it was faulty memory they`re are other types of
memory problems which are also becuase of faulty memory that I`ll agree but
the infinite loop it one of them IMO. These other memory problems are
similar in that they are both intermittent thats what makes them so
difficult