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Windows 2000 freezing when resolution is changed

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RadRacer203

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So I'm working on an ALR 6x6 (Unisys Aquanta HS/6) Pentium Pro server, and I'm having issues with the graphics card/drivers. I'm currently using a 256mb FX5200 PCI graphics card because it's the only one with above 8mb vram that worked with this machine and its unusual chipset and bios.

The issue is that the graphics card works perfectly up until I change the resolution past 640x480 at 256 colors once the drivers are installed. When I change the resolution and restart, I get onto the Windows desktop fine but then the computer locks up completely. It works fine at 640x480 though.

I have Windows 2000 Advanced Server installed and I have confirmed it does the same thing in Windows Server 2003, and someone with an identical setup was able to reproduce the issue too already. I confirmed I don't have any issues with the hardware, there's no IRQ conflicts, etc. I've also tried different driver versions, from the first to the last that are compatible.

I was wondering if anyone might have suggestions to fix this cause I'm completely stumped. Apart from this the computer works 100% perfectly.
 
RadRacer203 said:
So I'm working on an ALR 6x6 (Unisys Aquanta HS/6) Pentium Pro server, and I'm having issues with the graphics card/drivers. I'm currently using a 256mb FX5200 PCI graphics card because it's the only one with above 8mb vram that worked with this machine and its unusual chipset and bios.

The issue is that the graphics card works perfectly up until I change the resolution past 640x480 at 256 colors once the drivers are installed. When I change the resolution and restart, I get onto the Windows desktop fine but then the computer locks up completely. It works fine at 640x480 though.

I have Windows 2000 Advanced Server installed and I have confirmed it does the same thing in Windows Server 2003, and someone with an identical setup was able to reproduce the issue too already. I confirmed I don't have any issues with the hardware, there's no IRQ conflicts, etc. I've also tried different driver versions, from the first to the last that are compatible.

I was wondering if anyone might have suggestions to fix this cause I'm completely stumped. Apart from this the computer works 100% perfectly.
Click to expand...

What's the max resolution for the monitor?
 
I wonder how locked up it is. There is a registry key you can set that can trigger a blue screen and memory dump when you press and hold right-ctrl and then scroll-lock scroll-lock. There is another key you can set to trigger a dump with an nmi, some servers even have an nmi button for this purpose.
 
Are you sure there is not some application running at startup after the desktop that is triggering this?

If the driver has the option to do so somewhere, perhaps try disabling 2-D hardware acceleration features.

PCI card? Sort of a long shot, but if there are other slots perhaps try it in different slots.
 
The monitor's max resolution is 1280x1024, so I'm not exceeding that.

As far as I know there isn't anything running in the background, it's a fresh install of Windows. I have tried other slots with no luck, but I'll try and disable the hardware acceleration and see what happens.

I'll also try that registry key and report back, no NMI button on this machine
 
RadRacer203 said:
The monitor's max resolution is 1280x1024, so I'm not exceeding that.

As far as I know there isn't anything running in the background, it's a fresh install of Windows. I have tried other slots with no luck, but I'll try and disable the hardware acceleration and see what happens.

I'll also try that registry key and report back, no NMI button on this machine
Click to expand...

Rad,

I would try another video card and see what happens. Also, may be driver related.
 
Out of interest what are you trying to achieve here? You don't need a 256MB graphics card to drive a server's monitor, but on the other hand the P6 platform is notoriously poor at VRAM writes and also has no MMX which will hamper any attempts to use it as a late 90's/early 2000's gaming platform

Admittedly it looks cool as hell, but would you be better off trying to find a way to install a more conventional motherboard inside the case?
 
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Agent Orange said:
Rad,

I would try another video card and see what happens. Also, may be driver related.
Click to expand...

I've tried several video cards, a diamond s3 works perfectly fine. I really want to use a better video card than that though, and the FX5200 is the only one above 8mb that actually works with it at all

My goal is to make this thing as powerful as possible so the cpus are the max I can get without spending thousands on 6 Pentium 2 Overdrives, 4gb ram, trying to get a bunch of SCA drives for a raid array, etc. I don't need a card as late as the FX5200 but I definitely want something better than an s3 or crappy ATI Rage and this is the only one that wants to work at all.
 
The other cards I tried didn't even post with this machine so no drivers to worry about there! I'll try out the Dell driver but it's kind of looking like a lost cause now... A week in and no progress
 
As I explained in my video here >> https://youtu.be/M_R-40zjhuo << this is not a game machine nor was it intended for client focused applications. It was a very expensive backend system for handling mass amounts of data in the late 1990s. It also has been noted by other ALR Revolution 6x6 owners that they also have run into trouble with newer PCI graphic card chipsets. This is not surprising considering this was really designed to be a headless server crunching away in some dark corner of a datacenter. When the ALR 6x6 was introduced most of its marketed configurations had a 2MB PCI graphic card which was plenty for a 2D desktop workspace. During my testing I had no issues with period correct (late 90s) graphic chipsets. A "lost cause"? More like it's working as intended for that time period.

Here is a link to marketed configurations >> https://www.1000bit.it/js/web/viewer...quantahs6p.pdf
 
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There's no point in using a graphics card with more than 8 MB RAM in this machine that you're not going to use for 3D or gaming. 1280x1024 @ 32bpp == 5120 KB.
 
Completely forgot I created this thread, but I figured out that the issue was with the graphics card. Throwing in a more appropriate Matrox one with a voodoo 2 it has no issues anymore. The graphics card was also screwing with the ram too, when I put in all 4gb it would freeze and apparently that was caused because the system tried to allocate the 256mb of the graphics card in the middle of the 4th gig. Now that it has a normal card in it, all is good!
 
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