w2k install and screen goes wacko

During the w2k install detection function of devices all of a sudden the screen goes black but is filled with ( ' ) apostaphies.

Is a new ATI 32mb graphics card so I dont believe its that am leaning toward the motherboard.

Has anybody seen this before ????

 

Sounds like a hardware device is incompatible. Suggest you remove ALL PCI cards and ALL externally connected hardware, except the graphics card which obviously is needed to boot the PC. If you use onboard sound then disable that for the purposes of the install as well.

 

After removing the nic, sound card and modem the problem still occured so I replaced the ATI AGP 32mb graphics card with a 4mb nvidia card and low and behold the install proceeded. So far.

The ATI card I guess is bad which really surprises me. Dont really want to rebuild this machine with only a 4mb card so I think I will replace with a 32mb PCI card and see what happens. I guess possible board not able to handle the 32mb AGP.

Any thoughts ???

 

The mobo is a abit-bf6 and the graphics card is a 4x agp.

This graphics card was in my main machine before I went to a 64mb Nvidia AGP. But come to think of it about once a month or so with the ATI card in my main machine all of a sudden the monitor would go black on me and the only way to bring it back was to reboot. The system didnt die just the monitor went black and nothing would bring it back. So far the new card has not done this so it is looking like maybe the ATI might have had a problem.

Before I put w2k on this machine I installed 98 2nd edition and had no problems with the install but I was having problems with getting burning software to respond. Everytime I clicked on the exe for the burn sft it would "stop responding ". Didnt think the video card would do that but maybe it did. Next step is to install the burn sft and see if it works. Client that I got this machine from brought a new Dell from me and I only paid 50.00 for this his old one fortunately the 17" monitor was part of the deal and it at least is worth the 50.00 .