Radeon 200 Xpress?

[proffett]

Hi all...
I'm looking for some info to help me troubleshoot my system... below are my system specs. I am at work so right now I don't have access to either Sandra OR my computer, so I'm posting the nitty gritty as i know it and also the detailed* specs as offered by the manufacturer... (it's a HP, so you gotta take what you can get.)
basic system specs: 1.99GHz Athlon64 | XP MC SP2 | 1 gig RAM | 002 Rack/PT LE 6.4 (both second-hand)
First off, the issue(s):
I started off with a Windows XP Media Center box, so there is a big clue right there...
I installed PT as per the instructions, knowing it pprobably wouldn't work well, and it didn't. It would crash and cycle through the boot process over and over as soon as I tried to run PT.
I did my research (or so I thought) and tried all of the optimizing tweaks: updating pace, removing all of the media center references in the registry and other places in the system, and it finally actually seemed to work OK... I was able to run PT and even start a new session and record and play it back. Then I tried to open a session from a disk... as soon as the disk spooled up in the drive it went back through the reboot cycle and I had to boot into safe mode and uninstall PT to get it to boot into windows.
After more attempts and more tweaking I finally wiped my beloved little Linux box and loaded XP sp2 on the drive and put it in the machine, hoping it would work, planning on dual booting and using the bigger Media Center HD as a recording drive... everything installed perfect, rebooted the machine and fired up PT... oops. Instant perpetual reboot cycle... again... so apparently the issues I was seeing were not Media Center problems but issues with my system itself... did more research and found a line at the bottom of the compatibility sheets on the digi site that said "Radeon 200 Xpress is not recommended" but not what the problem actually is... perhaps this is part of my problem? I don't know. I'm using the onboard display as well as an add-on PCIe card to run dual monitors, so I could easily disable the onboard card and just run the PCIe card... and as soon as I get home from work I will be trying that.
I have browsed through this forum and found quite a few (*meaning more than one) reference to people with systems using the same onboard video chipset, but it seems that at least some are running PT OK. So I am wondering if I am missing something else? I haven't found any real references to anyone having the quite same issue as my system (infinite reboot cycle) but maybe I haven't dug deep enough.

Questions:
Has anyone seen similar issues with their system, whether it be the same video card or not, and what was done to fix it?
Is the perpetual reboot thing a symptom the the conflict between PT LE and the Radeon 200 Xpress chipset, or is it something else entirely? It seems to me that if Digidesign were going to post compatibility issues, it would also be helpful to post known symptoms of these issues to help with troubleshooting...

Any help would be greatly appreciated... I will be posting more system info as soon as I get a chance to get it rounded up, and will continue to troubleshoot at home, but if anyone out there has seen similar symtoms, I'd really like to hear what they did to remedy them, and what the actual causes were...

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long post...

Dan


More detailed PC specs (as I recall them):
HP Pavillion 1243w
Athlon64 3200+ Skt 939 1.99 GHz
1 Gb (2x512) RAM (1x OEM, 1x Compusa brand)
1x80 GB HD (XP MC)
1x(Smaller) HD (XP sp2 + PT)
OEM DVD RW
Onboard ATI Radeon 200 Xpress 256MB video card
Add-on PCIe ATI Radeon x1300 series 256MB video card
Onboard Realtek AC97 audio
USB KB+Mouse
1 F/W port, I believe it is a VIA chipset... if I recall the last time I looked at the hardware details correctly... but I might be thinking of something else.
2 USB ports

Here is the EOM info from HP, such as it is:

Motherboard description:
* Motherboard manufacturer's name: ASUS A8AE-LE
* HP/Compaq name: AmberineM-GL6E

CPU/Processor
* Socket: 939
* Supports AMD Athlon64, AMD Sempron and Athlon 64 X2 processors

Front-side bus (FSB)
* 2000MT/s or 1600MT/s, depending on what the processor supports

Chipset
* Northbridge: RS482
* Southbridge: SB400

BIOS features
* 4Mb LPC EEPROM
* HP BIOS with enhanced ACPI, DMI, Green, and PnP Features Plus

Form factor
* ATX form factor, 9.6 in x 9.6 in

Memory
* Dual-channel memory architecture
* 4 x 184-pin DDR DIMM sockets support unbuffered non-ECC 4 GB 400/300 MHZ DDR memory modules
* Maximum HP/Compaq approved memory is 4 GB*

NOTE:
*Actual available memory may be less

Expansion slots
* Three PCI
* One PCI Express (No AGP slot)

Video graphics
* Integrated

Serial ATA
* 2 SATA connectors
* Each connector supports 1 serial ATA-150 disk drive

Onboard audio or audio card
Controller: AC97 audio
Location: Integrated

Onboard LAN
* Realtek 8101L
* 10/100 Mbps LAN PHY

Back panel I/O
* One PS/2 mouse port
* One PS/2 keyboard port
* One VGA (monitor)
* One Parallel
* Four USB (2.0)
* One IEEE 1394
* One RJ-45 networking port
* One S/PDIF out
* Audio (line in, line out, microphone)

Internal connectors
* One 24-pin ATX power connector
* One 4-pin ATX power connector
* Two IDE connectors
* Two SATA connectors
* One floppy drive connector
* One CPU fan connector
* One System fan connector (also known as duct or chassis fan)
* One system indicator LEDs / power switch / reset button connector
* One each, front headphone, microphone in, line in (Aux-in)
* One front panel power and LED connectors
* Two USB connectors supporting 4 additional USB 2.0 ports
* One IEEE 1394a connector supporting one 1394a port

[spkguitar]

The first version of Pro Tools that was compatible with XP SP2 was 6.4cs9.

You need to:

1. install the 6.4cs6 update
2. install the 6.4cs9 update
3. install the latest PACE drivers
4. if all else fails, disable the DEP for XP (google it)

The built in Xpress 200 may eventually still be a problem, even if you disable it, but it's not what is causing your "reboot" problems.

[The Weed]

He may also have a problem with mismatched RAM.

"1 Gb (2x512) RAM (1x OEM, 1x Compusa brand)"

Cheers,

[spkguitar]

Indeed...





~

[proffett]

OK so this is what I get for posting at work on night shift... my PT version is 6.7, not 6.4 so I know it is compatible with sp2... sorry about that. And I do have the latest PACE drivers, just reinstalled them a minute ago as a matter of fact...
I have actually already set DEP to run for "essential windows programs and services only" as a normal part of my reload of XP... would it be worthwhile to edit boot.ini to set DEP to AlwaysOff?
I thought about the mismatched RAM too, and I do have another PC with a matched set (2Gb.) that I can switch out if I have to. I actually got that computer for the 002 initially but I'm waiting on a low profile firewire card and a new monitor before I can use it. It only has USB on the mobo. It also has onboard video and an addon card but they're both Nvidia. Hopefully I won't run into problems with that when I finally get them switched around.

Thanks for the replies, guys. I'm going to T/S this thing a little more, see if I've gotten anywhere, and let you know what I come up with.

Dan

[proffett]

Well, I got home from work yesterday and had a few minutes to monkey with it... so I disabled DEP and fired it up.
The PC booted up fine, so I launched PT, and up popped a dialog box saying something to the effect that there was a problem with the pace drivers, something about a disk image and invalid win32 app, but I clicked the OK button and all of a sudden ProTools was there... everything seemed to load OK, so I started a new session... wasn't able to record anything because the baby had just gone to sleep but everything seemed fine. I got the disk with my other PT session out and stuck it in the drive, it spooled up just fine and when I opened up the DVD-RW folder it came up just like it's supposed to. I copied the files onto the other hard drive and opened the session just fine... looks like the DEP thing did the trick.
Thanks for your help guys... I'm sure it won't be the last time I need help as I stumble through all this... PT is a lot more involved than the DAWs I'm used to.

Thanks again,

Dan