Green bars / lines at startup

PC Select · Mar 1, 2001

OK, I need to find out why Windows '98 SE, when booting into windows, will have green lines (looks kinda like a barcode) stretched across the top of the screen / monitor and causes the system to lock. Here is what I use in the systems it is occurring OFTEN on: Abit, ASUS but most often on the one mainboard we sell the most of, the Tyan 2390 Trinity mainboard with latest (and some not with latest) bios & MB Drivers w/ patches, AMD Duron 650MHZ thru T-Bird 1.2 GHZ CPU, Nvidia TNT2 Vanta 16mb AGP 4x video card with latest drivers (tried with old drivers also), ATI xpert 128 4x agp video card, ATI xpert 2000 agp 4x video card, VooDoo3 3000 & 3500 agp video card & Windows '98 SE. Now the green lines appear only on boot up, any boot after the first reboot of windows after a successful install. It could happen on the second boot or the 30th boot. It has no preference. So selective startups don't help because it could occur at any boot of the system. Hard to tech something like that. I've tried changing every configuration in the bios that has anything to do with video / agp ....i.e. 4x, 2x, shadowing enabled then disabled, irq's etc... We custom build a lot of machines here weekly and the only thing this problem has in common with itself is W'98 SE. Now we've just recently been getting this problem @ 4 months now and no one can give me an answer to this, is there something weird w/ '98SE & newer style boards?--- nobody has heard of this before ---I find it hard to believe that we are the only PC Store experiencing this problem. I've emailed & talked to many techs about this & no one has been able to help. Hopefully you will be my savior! The hard thing about this is that it does not always occur on each boot. It is very random. Please give me any insight you may have on this perplexing tech question. I thank you and value you important time put into this query. Oh, and sometimes the system will just reboot itself right before the icons are to appear on the screen at startup.

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DON SANDERS
www.pcselect.net
don@pcselect.net

Rollin' Rog · Mar 1, 2001

I don't have the card, but if you haven't seen this FAQ, check it out. You may have to "Find" the string "green" to locate the relevant part.
http://www.tweak3d.net/faq/#hw:gef:troub:startup:startlock

A little help:
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. Windows locks up before it finishes loading, and a thin green line may appear across the top of the screen. How can I fix it?
This may be caused by the Backup utility supplied with Windows 9x attempting to detect new tape devices on boot. You can fix it by deleting the files drvwppqt.vxd and drvwq117.vxd in the Windows\System\Iosubsys directory. If this helps, then search for the string 'TAPEDETECT' in your registry and delete any entries that exist. If you find this causes your tape drive to stop working, you'll have to reinstall Microsoft Backup. You can also simply uninstall Microsoft Backup if you don't use it.

Try updating the motherboard's BIOS. In particular on some Gigabyte boards based on the VIA KT133 chipset this may fix the problem. See the following page for more information: http://www.giga-byte.com/faq/question/question_kt133.htm

You may find that on motherboards that are only AGP 1.0 compliant you may be able to fix this problem by putting insulating tape over the last pair of contacts on the AGP connector on the GeForce card (the contact furthest from the monitor port, on both sides). This has been tested on the Chaintech 6BTM motherboard.

Try disabling the Windows startup sound.

Make sure that VSYNC is enabled in the NVIDIA control panel.

If you have IomegaWare installed, try uninstalling it. If this fixes the problem, just use Iomega Guest.

Also try reading the 'My GeForce keeps on locking up. How can I fix it? question.

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What the Dormouse Said

[This message has been edited by Rollin' Rog (edited 02-28-2001).]

PC Select · Mar 1, 2001

Thanks Rollin' Rog, I'll give it a shot!!! I appreciate your time!!!

Rollin' Rog · Mar 1, 2001

I've seen a few others ask about the problem, or a similar one, and don't know what if anything might have worked for them. So if you learn anything more give us a follow-up.

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What the Dormouse Said

Green bars / lines at startup

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