Can anyone help? I'm so confused

Try switching it to 256 colors or better. Windows will ask to restart. After that it might work properly.

If it still doesn't work, maybe post an image of the VIA CPU to AGP Controller driver version page in device manager.

Which 4-in-1 drivers did you install?

Also, I believe another cause of this issue is an incompatible AGP Graphics Aperture Size in the system BIOS. I would try 256MB.

Maybe incorrect directx version

Hi thanks for youre reply

Switching to any res / colour sadly just reboots back to 640x480 16 colours

I'm installing version 4.43

Ok.

Also make sure that you have 'Assign IRQ to VGA' set in your BIOS setup.

A small failed capacitor did something similar on my Radeon 9600.

'Assign IRQ to VGA' is not in any section of the BIOS 🙁

WarhammerDarkOmen wrote on 2024-07-17, 17:28:

'Assign IRQ to VGA' is not in any section of the BIOS 🙁

It's likely always enabled then. You should be able to see an IRQ assigned to VGA during POST on the list of devices and IRQs.

Have you had any other AGP cards work on this motherboard?

I just did a BIOS update on the machine to see if any new options show up, they didnt but nice to have the newest BIOS installed anyway.

I tried a Geforce 4 MX440 in it and it gave a Windows Protection Error prompt at boot, tried the Geforce 4 Ti 4200 and same thing with that now. I can revert back by going into safe mode and uninstalling the nvidia drivers but thats not going to help much.

I have no idea what the problem is.

Can you try a fresh install? Maybe temporarily try Windows XP just to see if the hardware is ok under that.

I dont have a clue here but just guessing.

I would try in the bios setting the AGP to 1x only and see if you have anymore luck. If that doesnt help maybe a fresh install and after that install the 4-in-1 drivers 1st before any other drivers.

As I said just guesses of what I might try.

What dx version ?
I believe it should be 8.1 or 8.2

Not been doing anything with it as got pretty frustrated. But now I'm going to refurbish all the hardware and hopefully it will fix it.

vvbee wrote on 2024-07-17, 17:26:

A small failed capacitor did something similar on my Radeon 9600.

I expect this is the case as the motherboard and GPU have bulged caps.

Cleaned the CPU cooler and new thermal paste applied, CPU also cleaned as someone put half a tube of thermal paste on it for whatever reason.

GPU is waayyyy overdue for new thermal paste.

Waiting on the new caps to come then we shall see if this fixes it.

I've experienced this with a late socket370 workstation board also with VIA chipset. The BIOS on that one was also very bare. It was fine with XP, but it always got into some resource conflict with AGP video cards on Windows 98 and they only worked in PCI mode.

Hmmm interesting, it certainly does seem to have a bare bones BIOS so maybe a better board would be a good idea? As the caps aren't leaking just bulged so although not ideal they probably haven't failed.

WarhammerDarkOmen wrote on 2024-07-31, 17:57:

so maybe a better board would be a good idea?

In your case? I doubt. The board surely has W98 drivers and if it does, it should work. In my case it was a workstation board with no official W98 drivers for that specific board, but I could try the drivers from the chipset vendor.

Worth to try XP to see if the graphics card works well with that though. I'd also try a different AGP graphics card with W98.

This seems to be never ending..

So, I got the caps for the old Gigabyte board but my soldering iron wasn't getting hot enough so I decided at this point i may as well get another board as they are pretty cheap (same price as a new soldering iron)

I got an MSI KT4V MS-6712 motherboard, why? it was cheap and red like my GPU so looks kinda cool.

Arrived today and i assembled it

Tried to start it up and nothing, zero.. dead. Like no life what so ever. I am using an AMD Athlon XP M 2000+ for lower power consumption could this be the issue? As i can't find a CPU list online for this board. Surely it would still power up just not post, no?

I do have a Athlon XP 2400+ still which i will try but at this point I'm close to just giving up. Everything I am trying is just going wrong I've never had this much trouble with building PC's in my life.

The BIOS download page lists the added CPU support with each BIOS - the XP2000 should be supported by even the earliest BIOS but you're good for anything with the last one that even supports Barton cores. https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/KT4V__KT4VL_v1.0/support