A7A266 and All in Wonder Radeon

Hi All,
Thanks to all who responded to my many posts over the past two years
about my ongoing hassles with my A7A266 (rev. 1.03) and an All in Wonder
Radeon (32Mb AGP) card, black screens, and Windows XP Pro. The problems are
solved, and the new board is running extremely well.
Here's what I did to get it this way -- in case anyone else is having
problems with this combination. First, I got another board from Asus (they
RMA'd it with no problem at all, even though the board was almost three
years old). Apparently, my original board wasn't up to snuff.
Second, I ditched the PC133 SDRAM and installed 2 ea. 256Mb DDR2700
sticks (SpecTek Select). Yes, I know the board only takes DDR 2100, but
this was on sale at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago, and it works in the
board (at 2100 speed, not 2700). It's on the "approved" list of memory for
the A7A266, so going the relatively expensive route of getting Crucial, etc.
RAM is no longer absolutely necessary for this board. Anyway, the RAM works
great. Aida32 likes it, too. In case any one is wondering, I bought the
SpecTek Select DDR 2700 to install in another board, but thought I'd try it
in the A7A266. Lo and behold, it worked like a charm.
The tricky part is getting the AGP to work on this board. Ali has
released version AGP Utility 1.40 as a zip file. You should definitely use
this. They also have released a new version of their Integrated driver,
version 2.05. These are NOT on the Asus site. You will need to go to the
Ali site to get them. I downloaded the AGP utility first -- you should,
too. You should also download the Radeon Catalyst drivers from July 7,
2003. They work with this combination (although others probably also work,
this is the combo I used). Make sure you get the WDM drivers and the
Multimedia Center, also. Have these ready and waiting on the desktop.
With a PCI video card in the machine, install the Ali AGP driver, and
reboot. Install the Ali Integrated 2.05 driver, then reboot. Next,
uninstall any existing video drivers, especially if they're Radeon. Shut
down the computer. Reboot, but press F8 to get to the menu options. Choose
'VGA Mode' and boot. Windows will load, and will almost immediately find
new hardware -- it wants to install its own drivers that don't work. That's
why you get a black screen -- the Windows default drivers don't work. You'll
install the ATI drivers in a moment.
Wait until Windows has finished finding new hardware, but DO NOT REBOOT
YET. Go back to the Ali utility you installed in the last step and set it
to AGP and Turbo. This will set the AGP function to 4x, which is what the
A7A266 can handle. You will need to reboot. Do it, but again press F8, and
again, choose 'VGA Mode'.
You should get to the Windows Desktop. Don't allow Windows to resize
your desktop at this point -- you don't have the new drivers in yet. Double
click on the ATI WDM drivers. Install them, but DON'T REBOOT when done.
You will see a message stating that you need to reboot, but don't do it.
Just continue on.
Without rebooting, install the ATI Display drivers you downloaded
earlier. Choose the Express setup. I should mention that you have to have
a recent version of Direct-X installed (if you don't, go get it, then come
back to this step). Install the drivers, saving them to their default
locations, then reboot normally.
Believe it or not, you should get to the Windows desktop. Windows
should locate new hardware, and should load the ATI drivers this time. At
this point, you can change your screen resolution and color depth to
something more appropriate. You're almost done. Install the ATI Multimedia
Center and the Control Panel. Reboot, when prompted, between the two
installations.
To complete this card's installation, get out your original ATI CD.
Drill down to the Gem directory, and install the tv listings program --
can't recall the name at the moment. If you have CATV, you can tell it to
download your local listings every week. Anyway, the ATI drivers from the W
eb don't include this program, so you will need to get it from the CD. If
you have a DVD player, run the DVD installer from the ATI site, and use the
CD to verify your ownership, rebooting, of course, when done.
It's a long process, but it does work.