Computer will not boot after installing SP2

Get a screen which displays:

Out of frequency
HF 83
VF 159
Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160
Power Management (Starts counting down from 20)

At the count down of 15, the system shuts down for about 30 seconds and then
does a reboot which takes it to the screen with the options of " Start
Windows Normally, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, etc"

If I select "Start Windows Normally" I get the "Out of Frequency" screen and
repeat the above.

At this point I started in Safe Mode, did a system restore to remove SP2,
and disabled Window's automatic updates to get back up and running.

Computer Specs: Abit VT7 motherboard, P4 2.4 GHz, ATI Radion Video card

Tried searching the knowledge base for "Out of Frequency" but got nothing
that seems to apply to this problem.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks for any and all help.

Claude

"cowpoke" wrote in message
...
Get a screen which displays:

Out of frequency
HF 83
VF 159
Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160
Power Management (Starts counting down from 20)

At the count down of 15, the system shuts down for about 30 seconds and
then
does a reboot which takes it to the screen with the options of " Start
Windows Normally, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, etc"

If I select "Start Windows Normally" I get the "Out of Frequency" screen
and
repeat the above.

At this point I started in Safe Mode, did a system restore to remove SP2,
and disabled Window's automatic updates to get back up and running.

Computer Specs: Abit VT7 motherboard, P4 2.4 GHz, ATI Radion Video card

Tried searching the knowledge base for "Out of Frequency" but got nothing
that seems to apply to this problem.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks for any and all help.

Claude

Personally I've only seen a message like "Out of Frequency" being displayed
by a monitor - not XP. It may be that XP is intelligent enough to know that
a monitor can't display at a given horizontal/vertical frequency, but I
don't know. Assuming it is related to the monitor (which the information you
provided would seem to indicate) then the monitor isn't capable of
displaying the current display mode, in which case:

Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160

is what the monitor will support - horizontal frequency and vertical
frequency, and

HF 83
VF 159

is what the current display mode requires. Why installing SP2 should change
your display mode beats me.

I would suggest starting up in safe mode and then selecting a suitable
screen resolution and then rebooting.

Hope this helps,

Brian.

--
_ _ _ __ ___ ____ ______ ____ ___ __ _ _ _ _

Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian
_ _ _ __ ___ ____ ______ ____ ___ __ _ _ _ _

As Brian has said, that says to me that the monitor can't cope with whatever
frequency it has been set at..... certainly isn't something that XP could
display!

Does it look more like a display from the monitor rather than XP or DOS??

I've heard of and experience various niggles following SP2 installations,
but not this. Did you upgrade the graphics driver in the process??

"cowpoke" wrote:

Get a screen which displays:

Out of frequency
HF 83
VF 159
Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160
Power Management (Starts counting down from 20)

At the count down of 15, the system shuts down for about 30 seconds and then
does a reboot which takes it to the screen with the options of " Start
Windows Normally, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, etc"

If I select "Start Windows Normally" I get the "Out of Frequency" screen and
repeat the above.

At this point I started in Safe Mode, did a system restore to remove SP2,
and disabled Window's automatic updates to get back up and running.

Computer Specs: Abit VT7 motherboard, P4 2.4 GHz, ATI Radion Video card

Tried searching the knowledge base for "Out of Frequency" but got nothing
that seems to apply to this problem.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks for any and all help.

Claude

Bryan, Lys,

I agree that it does seem to be a monitor issue but why would the computer
shut down and restart? Didn't do anything but install SP2.

I did get a software cd with the video card but not sure what drivers apply
to this older gateway monitor.

If I boot up in safe mode, what monitor resolution would you suggest?

Thanks for the help,

Claude


"Lys" wrote:

As Brian has said, that says to me that the monitor can't cope with whatever
frequency it has been set at..... certainly isn't something that XP could
display!

Does it look more like a display from the monitor rather than XP or DOS??

I've heard of and experience various niggles following SP2 installations,
but not this. Did you upgrade the graphics driver in the process??

"cowpoke" wrote:

Get a screen which displays:

Out of frequency
HF 83
VF 159
Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160
Power Management (Starts counting down from 20)

At the count down of 15, the system shuts down for about 30 seconds and then
does a reboot which takes it to the screen with the options of " Start
Windows Normally, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, etc"

If I select "Start Windows Normally" I get the "Out of Frequency" screen and
repeat the above.

At this point I started in Safe Mode, did a system restore to remove SP2,
and disabled Window's automatic updates to get back up and running.

Computer Specs: Abit VT7 motherboard, P4 2.4 GHz, ATI Radion Video card

Tried searching the knowledge base for "Out of Frequency" but got nothing
that seems to apply to this problem.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks for any and all help.

Claude

Claude,

I'd recommend nothing higher than 800 x 600, and make sure that the
frequency (also in Display Settings) is set to.. probably about 60Hz but
ensure only compatible refresh rates are shown, and setting it to the lowest
won't do any harm. At least then you should be able to get into Windows okay!

The computer is probably restarting if the resolution is way too high for it
to deal with as soon as it goes into Windows. I've known some computers
restart when that happens, others just carry on loading Windows but the
monitor remains blank.

Hope this helps.

"cowpoke" wrote:

Bryan, Lys,

I agree that it does seem to be a monitor issue but why would the computer
shut down and restart? Didn't do anything but install SP2.

I did get a software cd with the video card but not sure what drivers apply
to this older gateway monitor.

If I boot up in safe mode, what monitor resolution would you suggest?

Thanks for the help,

Claude


"Lys" wrote:

As Brian has said, that says to me that the monitor can't cope with whatever
frequency it has been set at..... certainly isn't something that XP could
display!

Does it look more like a display from the monitor rather than XP or DOS??

I've heard of and experience various niggles following SP2 installations,
but not this. Did you upgrade the graphics driver in the process??

"cowpoke" wrote:

Get a screen which displays:

Out of frequency
HF 83
VF 159
Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160
Power Management (Starts counting down from 20)

At the count down of 15, the system shuts down for about 30 seconds and then
does a reboot which takes it to the screen with the options of " Start
Windows Normally, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, etc"

If I select "Start Windows Normally" I get the "Out of Frequency" screen and
repeat the above.

At this point I started in Safe Mode, did a system restore to remove SP2,
and disabled Window's automatic updates to get back up and running.

Computer Specs: Abit VT7 motherboard, P4 2.4 GHz, ATI Radion Video card

Tried searching the knowledge base for "Out of Frequency" but got nothing
that seems to apply to this problem.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks for any and all help.

Claude

Re installed SP2, booted in safe mode, went to control panel,
display,settings and the monitor was set at 800 x 600. I tried every tab in
advanced and all other selections but could not find anything where I could
set or asjust the refresh rate for the monitor.

Had to restore system to pre SP2 installation to get up and running again.

In an earlier post, the video card mentioned was incorrect. Video card is
NVidia FX5200. I went on the net and downloaded the driver for the video card
and installed. Got the same "Out of Frequency" screen with the NVidia driver
but when the computer rebooted after the initial "Out of Frequency" screen I
could only get a black screen rather than a screen where I could select
SafeMode. Had to shut the power swithch off during an attempted boot to get
to the SafeMode screen where I could remove the NVidia driver.

Don't know where to go from here.

Thanks for the help,

Claude

"Lys" wrote:

Claude,

I'd recommend nothing higher than 800 x 600, and make sure that the
frequency (also in Display Settings) is set to.. probably about 60Hz but
ensure only compatible refresh rates are shown, and setting it to the lowest
won't do any harm. At least then you should be able to get into Windows okay!

The computer is probably restarting if the resolution is way too high for it
to deal with as soon as it goes into Windows. I've known some computers
restart when that happens, others just carry on loading Windows but the
monitor remains blank.

Hope this helps.

"cowpoke" wrote:

Bryan, Lys,

I agree that it does seem to be a monitor issue but why would the computer
shut down and restart? Didn't do anything but install SP2.

I did get a software cd with the video card but not sure what drivers apply
to this older gateway monitor.

If I boot up in safe mode, what monitor resolution would you suggest?

Thanks for the help,

Claude


"Lys" wrote:

As Brian has said, that says to me that the monitor can't cope with whatever
frequency it has been set at..... certainly isn't something that XP could
display!

Does it look more like a display from the monitor rather than XP or DOS??

I've heard of and experience various niggles following SP2 installations,
but not this. Did you upgrade the graphics driver in the process??

"cowpoke" wrote:

Get a screen which displays:

Out of frequency
HF 83
VF 159
Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160
Power Management (Starts counting down from 20)

At the count down of 15, the system shuts down for about 30 seconds and then
does a reboot which takes it to the screen with the options of " Start
Windows Normally, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, etc"

If I select "Start Windows Normally" I get the "Out of Frequency" screen and
repeat the above.

At this point I started in Safe Mode, did a system restore to remove SP2,
and disabled Window's automatic updates to get back up and running.

Computer Specs: Abit VT7 motherboard, P4 2.4 GHz, ATI Radion Video card

Tried searching the knowledge base for "Out of Frequency" but got nothing
that seems to apply to this problem.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks for any and all help.

Claude

Long weekend, otherwise I would have replied sooner.

If you've not found it, and I appreciate that with different drivers the
exact place can change, but I would expect to find the display frequency:

Open display properties
Settings tab.
Advanced
Monitor tab - Screen refresh rate should be there.

Something else to try, when in safe-mode, I think it uses the default vga
driver. This might mean that it won't let you change the refresh rate. In
which case (if you've not already done so) try setting the resolution to
800x600 (as per Claude's suggestion) and rebooting. I think (not 100% sure
about this) that it will default to a low refresh rate - and hopefully
you'll get a picture.

I think I now have a better understanding of the problem in general. If when
you have the driver installed you can't adjust the refresh rate or it
doesn't help then your old course of action is to use your old graphics
driver. Is there any chance that you can upgrade to SP2 and then re-install
your old graphics driver? I have a laptop at home running windows 2000 and I
can't let it auto-update, because if it does it will pick up a newer
graphics driver - and as soon as it does that I get a white screen, no text
just white and I can't do anything until I've booted up in safe mode and
reinstalled the original driver that came with the laptop. My point is that,
from experience, I accept that some display drivers will break a pc. So it
may be a case of seeing if you can work round the problem, using your
original display driver.

regards,

Brian.


--
_ _ _ __ ___ ____ ______ ____ ___ __ _ _ _ _

Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian
_ _ _ __ ___ ____ ______ ____ ___ __ _ _ _ _


"cowpoke" wrote in message
...
Re installed SP2, booted in safe mode, went to control panel,
display,settings and the monitor was set at 800 x 600. I tried every tab
in
advanced and all other selections but could not find anything where I
could
set or asjust the refresh rate for the monitor.

Had to restore system to pre SP2 installation to get up and running again.

In an earlier post, the video card mentioned was incorrect. Video card is
NVidia FX5200. I went on the net and downloaded the driver for the video
card
and installed. Got the same "Out of Frequency" screen with the NVidia
driver
but when the computer rebooted after the initial "Out of Frequency" screen
I
could only get a black screen rather than a screen where I could select
SafeMode. Had to shut the power swithch off during an attempted boot to
get
to the SafeMode screen where I could remove the NVidia driver.

Don't know where to go from here.

Thanks for the help,

Claude

"Lys" wrote:

Claude,

I'd recommend nothing higher than 800 x 600, and make sure that the
frequency (also in Display Settings) is set to.. probably about 60Hz but
ensure only compatible refresh rates are shown, and setting it to the
lowest
won't do any harm. At least then you should be able to get into Windows
okay!

The computer is probably restarting if the resolution is way too high for
it
to deal with as soon as it goes into Windows. I've known some computers
restart when that happens, others just carry on loading Windows but the
monitor remains blank.

Hope this helps.

"cowpoke" wrote:

Bryan, Lys,

I agree that it does seem to be a monitor issue but why would the
computer
shut down and restart? Didn't do anything but install SP2.

I did get a software cd with the video card but not sure what drivers
apply
to this older gateway monitor.

If I boot up in safe mode, what monitor resolution would you suggest?

Thanks for the help,

Claude


"Lys" wrote:

As Brian has said, that says to me that the monitor can't cope with
whatever
frequency it has been set at..... certainly isn't something that XP
could
display!

Does it look more like a display from the monitor rather than XP or
DOS??

I've heard of and experience various niggles following SP2
installations,
but not this. Did you upgrade the graphics driver in the process??

"cowpoke" wrote:

Get a screen which displays:

Out of frequency
HF 83
VF 159
Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160
Power Management (Starts counting down from 20)

At the count down of 15, the system shuts down for about 30 seconds
and then
does a reboot which takes it to the screen with the options of "
Start
Windows Normally, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, etc"

If I select "Start Windows Normally" I get the "Out of Frequency"
screen and
repeat the above.

At this point I started in Safe Mode, did a system restore to
remove SP2,
and disabled Window's automatic updates to get back up and running.

Computer Specs: Abit VT7 motherboard, P4 2.4 GHz, ATI Radion Video
card

Tried searching the knowledge base for "Out of Frequency" but got
nothing
that seems to apply to this problem.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks for any and all help.

Claude

Found the screen refresh but it only shows "use hardware default settings"
and will not allow any changes.

Not sure what you mean by "use your old graphics driver". Currently without
SP2 installed I am assuming Windows is using some generic graphics driver but
I can't seem to find the name or location of that driver in order to try your
suggestion.

I did try forcing and 800 x 600 resolution while in safe mode with SP2
installed but not sure it took as I got the "out of frequency" error on
reboot.

With no SP2 installed, the settings tab for "display" shows 800 x 600 True
Color 32bit defaultl refresh.

Does any of this help?

Thanks for the help,

Claude


"Brian Cryer" wrote:

Long weekend, otherwise I would have replied sooner.

If you've not found it, and I appreciate that with different drivers the
exact place can change, but I would expect to find the display frequency:

Open display properties
Settings tab.
Advanced
Monitor tab - Screen refresh rate should be there.

Something else to try, when in safe-mode, I think it uses the default vga
driver. This might mean that it won't let you change the refresh rate. In
which case (if you've not already done so) try setting the resolution to
800x600 (as per Claude's suggestion) and rebooting. I think (not 100% sure
about this) that it will default to a low refresh rate - and hopefully
you'll get a picture.

I think I now have a better understanding of the problem in general. If when
you have the driver installed you can't adjust the refresh rate or it
doesn't help then your old course of action is to use your old graphics
driver. Is there any chance that you can upgrade to SP2 and then re-install
your old graphics driver? I have a laptop at home running windows 2000 and I
can't let it auto-update, because if it does it will pick up a newer
graphics driver - and as soon as it does that I get a white screen, no text
just white and I can't do anything until I've booted up in safe mode and
reinstalled the original driver that came with the laptop. My point is that,
from experience, I accept that some display drivers will break a pc. So it
may be a case of seeing if you can work round the problem, using your
original display driver.

regards,

Brian.


--
_ _ _ __ ___ ____ ______ ____ ___ __ _ _ _ _

Brian Cryer
www.cryer.co.uk/brian
_ _ _ __ ___ ____ ______ ____ ___ __ _ _ _ _


"cowpoke" wrote in message
...
Re installed SP2, booted in safe mode, went to control panel,
display,settings and the monitor was set at 800 x 600. I tried every tab
in
advanced and all other selections but could not find anything where I
could
set or asjust the refresh rate for the monitor.

Had to restore system to pre SP2 installation to get up and running again.

In an earlier post, the video card mentioned was incorrect. Video card is
NVidia FX5200. I went on the net and downloaded the driver for the video
card
and installed. Got the same "Out of Frequency" screen with the NVidia
driver
but when the computer rebooted after the initial "Out of Frequency" screen
I
could only get a black screen rather than a screen where I could select
SafeMode. Had to shut the power swithch off during an attempted boot to
get
to the SafeMode screen where I could remove the NVidia driver.

Don't know where to go from here.

Thanks for the help,

Claude

"Lys" wrote:

Claude,

I'd recommend nothing higher than 800 x 600, and make sure that the
frequency (also in Display Settings) is set to.. probably about 60Hz but
ensure only compatible refresh rates are shown, and setting it to the
lowest
won't do any harm. At least then you should be able to get into Windows
okay!

The computer is probably restarting if the resolution is way too high for
it
to deal with as soon as it goes into Windows. I've known some computers
restart when that happens, others just carry on loading Windows but the
monitor remains blank.

Hope this helps.

"cowpoke" wrote:

Bryan, Lys,

I agree that it does seem to be a monitor issue but why would the
computer
shut down and restart? Didn't do anything but install SP2.

I did get a software cd with the video card but not sure what drivers
apply
to this older gateway monitor.

If I boot up in safe mode, what monitor resolution would you suggest?

Thanks for the help,

Claude


"Lys" wrote:

As Brian has said, that says to me that the monitor can't cope with
whatever
frequency it has been set at..... certainly isn't something that XP
could
display!

Does it look more like a display from the monitor rather than XP or
DOS??

I've heard of and experience various niggles following SP2
installations,
but not this. Did you upgrade the graphics driver in the process??

"cowpoke" wrote:

Get a screen which displays:

Out of frequency
HF 83
VF 159
Operating Frequency
HF 30-70
VF 50-160
Power Management (Starts counting down from 20)

At the count down of 15, the system shuts down for about 30 seconds
and then
does a reboot which takes it to the screen with the options of "
Start
Windows Normally, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, etc"

If I select "Start Windows Normally" I get the "Out of Frequency"
screen and
repeat the above.

At this point I started in Safe Mode, did a system restore to
remove SP2,
and disabled Window's automatic updates to get back up and running.

Computer Specs: Abit VT7 motherboard, P4 2.4 GHz, ATI Radion Video
card

Tried searching the knowledge base for "Out of Frequency" but got
nothing
that seems to apply to this problem.

Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks for any and all help.

Claude

"cowpoke" wrote in message
...
Found the screen refresh but it only shows "use hardware default settings"
and will not allow any changes.

I think that while you are in safe mode it probably won't let you change the
refresh rate.

Not sure what you mean by "use your old graphics driver". Currently
without
SP2 installed I am assuming Windows is using some generic graphics driver
but I can't seem to find the name or location of that driver in order to
try your
suggestion.

Do you have the motherboard cd that came with your motherboard (assuming the
graphics card is integrated), or if its a separate graphics card the cd that
originally came with it? That's what I'm referring to.

I did try forcing and 800 x 600 resolution while in safe mode with SP2
installed but not sure it took as I got the "out of frequency" error on
reboot.

With no SP2 installed, the settings tab for "display" shows 800 x 600 True
Color 32bit defaultl refresh.

Does any of this help?

Thanks for the help,

Claude

I suspect we've not going to resolve this one

Brian.

"Brian Cryer" wrote:

"cowpoke" wrote in message
...
Found the screen refresh but it only shows "use hardware default settings"
and will not allow any changes.

I think that while you are in safe mode it probably won't let you change the
refresh rate.

Not sure what you mean by "use your old graphics driver". Currently
without
SP2 installed I am assuming Windows is using some generic graphics driver
but I can't seem to find the name or location of that driver in order to
try your
suggestion.

Do you have the motherboard cd that came with your motherboard (assuming the
graphics card is integrated), or if its a separate graphics card the cd that
originally came with it? That's what I'm referring to.

Graphics card is not integrated in the motherboard. I did try installing the
graphics driver from the cd that came with the graphics card and got the
same "out of frequency" error message that I get with SP2. The only
difference being I could never get to the screen requesting "start windows
normally, safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, etc.", only a black
screen. To get to the "start windows normally, safe mode, safe mode with
command prompt, etc.", I shut the power off while the computer was booting
and then restarted.



I did try forcing and 800 x 600 resolution while in safe mode with SP2
installed but not sure it took as I got the "out of frequency" error on
reboot.

With no SP2 installed, the settings tab for "display" shows 800 x 600 True
Color 32bit defaultl refresh.

Does any of this help?

Thanks for the help,

Claude

I suspect we've not going to resolve this one

Brian.

"cowpoke" wrote in message
...

(snip)

Graphics card is not integrated in the motherboard. I did try installing
the
graphics driver from the cd that came with the graphics card and got the
same "out of frequency" error message that I get with SP2. The only
difference being I could never get to the screen requesting "start windows
normally, safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, etc.", only a black
screen. To get to the "start windows normally, safe mode, safe mode with
command prompt, etc.", I shut the power off while the computer was booting
and then restarted.


just to confirm, this driver does work with SP1? or are you using a driver
from somewhere else - for example did XP autodetect it and suggest a driver?