Issues with drivers for ATI Radeon x1950 Pro on XP Home SP3 32bit

[Lielanthris]

Hello friends!
I just discovered this forum after searching for, well, a Windows XP Forum. Looks like there are a lot of fun topics here. I can't wait to start exploring. Anyway. On towards the reason me being here.

I recently bought a lot of random parts to make a "Retro Windows XP gaming rig" I have been having issues with drivers. Mainly pertaining towards a refurbished Visiontek ATI Radeon x1950 Pro. The video card works great, that is until I get the drivers I downloaded installed. The issues is that once the drivers are installed into my Windows xp home edition sp3 32bit system, Once I restart the PC, the splash screen comes up, windows loading screen comes up, then once it finally gets into the operating system, the monitor shuts off and will no longer receive a signal.

Now, I've reformated the harddrive several times, fresh install of windows, upgraded to sp3, installed motherboard drivers, which are also a pain in themselves as well, I cannot find all the correct drivers for it either. Each time I get odd graphical glitches, but only in the windows loading screen, even before I load to windows for the first time. However, if I run the system in safe mode, I can log into windows with no issues. I'm almost at my wits end with this build.


Picture of said graphical issues on Windows splash screen.

It seems like every where I look for the drivers for these, None of them seem to work for my system. I've tried directly from the visiontek website, from AMD legacy drivers, random drivers from shifty websites. Nothing seems to be working for me. I am so desperate for any tip that can help me out. I have spent more money than I wanted to get this system together. I am at the edge of greatness and fun games, yet it now seems so far away.

Current system specs:
Motherboard: Intel D945GNT, D945PSN
CPU: Intel P4 HT 3.00Ghz
RAM 2gb Apacer DDR2 PC4300
GPU: Visiontek ATI Radeon x1950 Pro 256mb
HDD: SATA 80gb Maxtor HDD
Audio: CL Soundblaster Live!

 

[cleverscreenname]

I know this is over a year late to the party, but I have used an ATI Radeon x1950 Pro on XP, and your problem is that the ATI drivers are setting the resolution way too stinkin' high as soon as they are installed and rebooted. I'm talking 1600x1200 or higher, but from the size of your monitor in your picture, yours definitely can't go that high. You'll need to boot into safe mode (press F8 twice-per-second after turning on your computer until you get Windows Startup Options) and... well I assume changing the resolution there will fix it? The resolution is stored somewhere in Regedit but I can't tell you where off the top of my head... you could also borrow someone's much bigger monitor or TV to adjust your resolution.
Now you might get really lucky, and when you rebooted and the signal went away maybe Windows found your PlugNPlay monitor again, and is waiting for you to press enter to auto-install the drivers. Once you're booted up, signal is lost, and the computer (hard drive) seems to be idle, try pressing Enter several times at a speed of once-per-second (It'll execute Next, Next, OK, etc). (Not too fast or your Enters will accidentally execute the Cancel button during the driver installation file-copy process lol)

As far as the glitches, that should be your display cord from computer to monitor. Could be damaged or just not plugged in fully or could be really close to some other electrical device causing interference.
Or it really could be actual glitching internally on the graphics card, that would be easy to test if you had a different computer to swap it into.