Need some help on "VPU Recover" error message, ple

(TAngelo) #1

Hi guys; I just got my new computer and it seems to work ok for the most part, except for this one “VPU Recover” problem. The problem is that whenever I play a game (I installed Mafia yesterday, plus the Deus Ex 2 and Far Cry demos, haven’t tried ET yet :wink: ) I get a VPU Recover message, saying VPU Recover has (I’ll have to try translating from Dutch) reset the graphic accelerator because it no longer responds to commands from the graphics driver…or something along those lines. The game plays alright, and I can play for minutes on end, mostly, but the message appears inevitably after a while.

I’ve a Radeon card, a 9600XT, and looking at the control panel under the Advanced Options for video, I indeed see a tab there for VPU Recover, whatever it is. The question is, why does this message keep popping up? What does it mean, and most of all, how can I get rid of it and finally get to some gaming on this new machine? VPU Recover also gives me the option of sending the error report to ATI Technologies, which I’ve done up til now, but I don’t know if that’ll make any difference.

(TAngelo) #2

Ah yes, and since I’m on winXP now (used to have 98SE), do I need to download any special version of ET when I want to install it? Or do I just gotothe download section of the site and get the regular ‘windows’ version? Thanks.

(CM..Punk) #3

Try disabling fast write, and lowering the AGP if the motherboard can’t handle it at maximum (put it at 2x or something)

(Rain) #4

A friend of mine had a Radeon (I think it was a 9500 or 9600, but I don’t remember for sure…) ET, especially, gave her all kinds of hell—we tried just about everything to make the damned thing work, but she wasn’t as patient as I was, and she eventually returned the card for a GF4FX.

The “VPU Recover” stuff was nearly impossible to translate (she’s Austrian, using a German-language version of Win2k, so ATI’s drivers installed in German.) I eventually ended up mucking around with Windows and changed the language settings to English. This is especially amusing, since Windows Update apparently uses that info when fetching updates—she now has a mutt version of Win2k that’s half-English and half-German. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, the VPU Recovery stuff is basically a watchdog—whenever the GPU stops responding for one reason or another, the drivers will reset the chip (if VPU Recovery is enabled) so that you can close everything and do a proper reboot. (The drivers will refuse to do 3D again until you actually reboot.) Kind of a nifty feature, but it doesn’t really give you any info on the underlying problem. (If you disable vpu recovery, you’ll likely just have the system become completely unusable where you’d otherwise get the message.)

(=ABS= SparhawK) #5

I have turned VPU recover off, ET used to send my system silly after a random time. Turned it off and now no probs.

SH

(meLonF) #6

yeah, VPU recover caused nothing but problems for me.

when it is on my pc seems to crash constantly, but when it is switched off everything is perfectly stable :confused:

(Slappy) #7

I’ve started getting this lately too. (Also with a 9600XT) and was thinking about adding some better cooling than the stock case fans. Good to know it’s not an isolated incident anyway.