(OT) Dual display GF2GTS/TNT2 bluescreen

Apologies for the Off-topic post, I can’t figure out where else to ask about this…

I’m having a problem trying to run my computer with two displays, using a GF2GTS in the AGP and a TNT2 in a PCI slot. Booting up the machine, Win2K bluescreens, telling me about an invalid IRQ (I can post the exact error message if needed), as soon as I put the TNT2 in.
My machine is an Athlon XP1700 on an Elitegroup K7S motherboard (SIS 735 chipset), 28.32 Detonators.

I’ve tried putting the TNT2 in different PCI slots, and changing the primary display adapter from AGP to PCI in the BIOS, with the same result.

If any of you have a hint as of what I’m doing wrong, I’d greatly appreciate it

I’ve installed 2 nvidia cards too.
This is what I had to do:-

  1. Uninstall all display drivers.
  2. Change primary display to PCI in BIOS
  3. Insert PCI card (leave the AGP card out of the machine for now)
  4. Boot up windows with just this PCI card.
  5. If windows detects new hardware and attempts to install drivers, CLICK CANCEL.
  6. Run the NVidia driver installer.
  7. Restart machine. Your PCI card should now be working ok.
  8. Shut down machine.
  9. Insert your AGP card - so you should now have a TNT in the PCI slot, and a Geforce in the AGP slot.
  10. Boot up machine - if windows detects new hardware and attempts to install drivers, CLICK CANCEL.
  11. Run the NVidia installer again.
  12. Restart machine.
  13. Now go into display properties, and select “Expand my desktop onto this display”.

That should work. However, you may need to aquire some earlier detonator drivers for it to work properly (we had trouble with the ones released about 2 months ago). The drivers you’ll need are probably about 4-5 months old by now (this is only if the above method doesn’t work).

Thanks knackered, I’ll try that
Along those lines and out of curiousity, is there any ‘real’ difference in which video card is set as the primary and which as the secondary?

Oh I don’t know…as far as the BIOS is concerned, if PCI is set as primary, that’s where your BIOS boot up sequence will appear. But as far as windows is concerned, no matter what your BIOS says, if there’s an AGP card in your machine, that will always be considered the primary display device…dunno why.

so Dodger did it Work for you ??? also do you have the same refresh rate for both monitors, or you can change different for each… Im thinking about adding second Monitor, maybe even Third one (lol)… However I will do this in fall… Will check out the Maxtor new card that allows you to hook up 3 monitors at once… however If Nvidia will include this option with their GF5, I will but GF5…

The next question will be how do you get openGL hardware acceleration on BOTH (or if using matrox new card 3) monitors.

BTW, I didn’t have to insert a pci card first, I just stuck it in after, and it worked OK. Maybe it has something to do with I was using a ATI & GF2 card, which is ok, but I guess you can’t do that with 2 nvidia cards? (Seems strange).

Oh well, whatever works!

Didn’t work for me but it seems it’s not actually a problem with when and how to stick in the TNT, but rather with the TNT itself. When I had it in my machine as the only video card, the computer beeped a few times (instead of once at post time) and didn’t boot up. So, it seems my TNT2 is actually fried
Strangely enough, the computer didn’t complain when I had the GF2 in the AGP slot additionally.

I’ll try the same again with another PCI card and post an update if it worked and which steps I had to take.
Thanks again for the quick help