HELP SAPPHIRE 9500 SCREWED

**fufiter9246** · June 20th, 2003, 08:44 PM

Ok well here's what I did, I got the Sapphire Atlantis 9500 128MB Pro and decided to flash it and try to overclock.

Used WARP11's .bin, then flashed it, then restarted my computer, it locked up at the WinXP start up screen, then when I did a system restore no matter what, as soon as I reinstall the drivers for the card and restart, the comuter locks at WinXP, i have to continuously return to safe mode or run from the last best saved point

Guys.....i think im screwed, i really didn't want to do this but I wanted to try it out b/c everyone said they could...the card worked great before I tried to flash it, and now i'm not even going to install the drivers and just leave it as an unknown card until i can figure it out, thats the only way I can type to you guys right now

Someone please help otherwise i'm 150.00 in the hole....

**rastorize** · June 20th, 2003, 10:34 PM

So you followed the steps...Here (9700 pro instructions...works the same for the 9500 pro, just different filenames for the bios)

Here's the original thread from Warp11 himself...TONS of info for those who need help

And here is Warp11's homepage, in case you don't have it...more info there as well.

What are your hardware specs? AMD or Intel box?

So...you made a bootable floppy disk...used the ATI flash utility and backed up the original bios...then flashed it with the warp11 bios...correct? Did you flash it with the correct bios...there's quite a few variations and it can be confusing which one.

...then you rebooted...and you can see the bios screen...and you can see that you're booting into Windows...that means you didn't hose the card...if you did, you wouldn't have any video at all. I'm not sure that if you flashed it with the wrong Warp11 bios...say the 9500 instead of the 9500pro bios...if that would still give you video or not...probably would get a checksum error instead and it wouldn't flash at all.

Are you using the bundled Sapphire drivers or the Catalyst drivers? You have to use the Catalyst drivers. Did you go into safe mode...uninstall anything related to Sapphire or ATI drivers...then reboot? Chances are, since you have video, your card is fine...there's something that Window's isn't happy with. Are you running PowerStrip by any chance? If you are, get rid of it, at least on my machine, it would lock it up once I flashed the card. Use the Rage3D overclocking tools instead like Rage3D tweak or Radeonator.

Do you have any other utilities installed relating to video...like any tweaking or overclocking utilities...remove them.

If you did back up the original bios...you could flash it back to see if that fixes it. If you didn't back it up, you can probably find the original bios in the links I gave you above.

Do you have another machine you can throw the card into to test it?

I bit the bullet and did the bios mod on my Sapphire Atlantis also...I knew there was a chance that I could hose it...but couldn't resist the urge to do it. Before I did anything though, I completely removed any drivers and anything related to ATI or Sapphire...then I rebooted and proceeded to flash the card and rebooted...when I got to Windows XP, it detected it as a new 9700 pro and I installed the Catalyst drivers...and all was fine. I hope yours will be too.

Like I said, I doubt the card is hosed since you have a display...good luck! Let us know what happens!!

**fufiter9246** · June 20th, 2003, 10:54 PM

Ok, I have the Sapphire 9500 Pro 128mb, what are the exact bios files that I need to flash??? Cause there are so many, I do not konw which one?

**fufiter9246** · June 20th, 2003, 11:06 PM

Ok hey i was able to flash thte bios, and it takes me to windows now, but it says that it is still and "UNKNOWN VGA" device, do I have to point it to catalyst drivers "then" it recognizes it as a 9700? or what?

**rastorize** · June 20th, 2003, 11:20 PM

Yes...go ahead and leave it as an unknown VGA or generic or whatever...get into Windows...and install the Catalyst video drivers and then the control panel drivers. It should then detect your card as a 9700 pro.

So when Windows ask for the drivers...just cancel it...tell Windows to forget about it. Then just install the drivers...

Did you Flash it back to the original 9500 pro bios or the modded bios?

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 12:37 AM

yes i did a long time ago, and now i'm on the new ones, so far so good i'm going to try and reinstall the drivers and see what it tells me

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 12:50 AM

ok well i'm back to safe mode, in fact I uninstalled the drivers and then reinstalled them in safe mode and it still locked, it locks when the WinXP loading screen pops up???? I'm installing the Catalyst drivers that came on the CD for the 9500 Pro by the way

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 01:00 AM

Oh and another thing, my control panel will not let me uninstall the ATI Drivers for some reason, along with the Control Panel, is there a way to delete those system files?

**rastorize** · June 21st, 2003, 01:00 AM

Go to add/remove programs and uninstall the ATI control panel AND the ATI drivers. Then go to device manager and remove the card there. Reboot. It will detect the card...tell it to search for the drivers...it'll fail and use generic drivers. Then install the latest ATI Catalyst drivers...reboot...then install the latest control panel files.

You need to download the latest Catalyst drivers from ATI's site. Once flashed, it's no longer a 9500 pro according to XP...it's now a 9700 pro...don't use the drivers that came with the card.

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 01:20 AM

ok for some odd reason I cannot delete Control Panel at all, its just permanently there for some reason, maybe that's what's holding me back when XP tries to load it sees that?

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 10:25 AM

Ok well, heres the rest of the stuff:

When I go to install the Catalyst drivers, it continuely shows the video card as a 9500 Pro.......the only reason I know this is bc I have to boot to Safe Mode and uninstall the drivers everytime....it still won't recognize it as a 9700, everytime I install the drivers WinXP will not boot normally, any suggestions?

**rastorize** · June 21st, 2003, 12:19 PM

Do you have another PC you can try the card in?

Did you look through the links I gave you at the beginning of this thread? They deal specifically with this topic...

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 12:25 PM

Well I have made some progress, when I do install the drivers it takes me to the desktop, but it before it does that it "restarts" my monitor, turns it on and off to reveal this horrible looking blue scrambled mess where I can't read anything then finally the desktop shows to tell me there was an error, and that standard drivers were installed........everytime I try to install the drivers it either locks up or I get this scrambled blue mess.....any clues?

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 12:28 PM

Furthermore, I ran this atiflash -u 0 r9500.e6, and now when I go to find out what my VGA card is, it tells me no matter what BIOS i run that it is not the same VGA as the VGA Card

**dlh75** · June 21st, 2003, 01:23 PM

Why did you flash? It seems you had a pretty good card allready. Now your card could be messed up. Maybe there is a way to put back original Bios. I would say if it ain't broke why fix it. Meaning card was allready good so why try to o/c it. That should be done only if you know what u r doing. As you can tell I'm not a big fan of overclocking. Just for the fact I don't have the money to replace expensive parts. But if done right can get more performance.

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 01:24 PM

Thanks for the info, but I need some help in fixing the problem not realizing what I shouldn't have done a few hours ago

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 02:16 PM

Ok well I repackaged the video card and am sending it back to newegg.com, put back in the old GeForce2 GTS, should be fun times!!

**dlh75** · June 21st, 2003, 03:19 PM

Will they take it back for a full refund? Hope you learned from this.

**fufiter9246** · June 21st, 2003, 03:24 PM

no im getting a replacement, just going to tell them it never worked, i can't afford this crap

**rastorize** · June 21st, 2003, 06:44 PM

Sorry it didn't work out for you...there's always a chance of hosing the card when you go modifying or overclocking parts...just the price you pay for living on the edge. Glad you can get a replacement card from Newegg.