ati card on 2k crashes! help!

[paolow]

ok - im really stuck with this, ive just swapped an old geforce 2 card for an ati radeon 8500 but it locks the sys up at the win 2k splash screen. the old geforce worked ok, but nothing i do will get the machine to work with the ati card. ive tried new drivers etc but, even though they are correctly installed, diagnostic tools tell me "driver not present or incorrectly installed". it boots just fine in vga mode and i dont think its the card as ive tried with two and the problem persists. what im currently thinking is a fresh os install and go from there. do i have to be this drastic? any help would be really appreciated! ive tried to update the drivers for the mobo but hit a barrier when i couldnt figure out just what mobo it was. its an old p3 833 system (dell dimension 4100), could age be a drama? the card is 4x but the mobo seems compatible and all is well in the bios too. the sys isnt mine so i dont want to get too carried away, but after three hours ive not really got anywhere!
thanks in advance
paolo

[stc_bennett]

You may have a power consumption problem, ati card eat the power of the mother board

I had a similar problem with a matrox card a new power supply from Q-tec solved the problem

Check overclockers for the 550watt version £25
www.overclockers.co.uk

[paolow]

stc_bennett said:

You may have a power consumption problem, ati card eat the power of the mother board I had a similar problem with a matrox card a new power supply from Q-tec solved the problem Check overclockers for the 550watt version £25 www.overclockers.co.uk

not a bad idea, but i also tried an old matrox g400 card which also didnt work. not sure what the psu is rated to though, will investigate...