It's a drivers problem I bet. For the longest time before Nvidia released good drivers for W2K, my TNT2 and Geforce both ran with no AGP support.
 
That's my best guess.
 
...

Could be a problem with the AGP interface on your motherboard, Matrox cards run a self-test on bootup to check the stability of motherboards running at an agp 2x or higher. This does indeed sound like a strange problem especially with a motherboard as mature and stable as the BE6 range. However I have heard of problems with the BE6-2. I have an Athlon 800 with Matrox G400 Max and Asus K7M motherboard - agpx2 = easy. Check you're power supply if it can't deliver enough oomph (amps) over the agp slot - the graphics card will fall back to agp x1.

Hi,
Thanks for the replies.
I'm using a 250watt power supply, but I do have quite a few devices inside my PC.
Maybe I should consider moving up to a 300watt?
So you feel this is more likely to be a problem with the AGP port on the motherboard than an issue with the Matrox card itself?
 
Thanks.
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ABit BE6-II, PIII 550, 384MB RAM, G400 MAX, SB Live! Value, Adaptec 2940UW, Intel Pro 100 PCI network card, 20GB ATA-66 7,200 IBM HD, 22GB ATA-66 7,200 IBM HD, Pioneer 6x/32x DVD, Yamaha 4416 CD-RW, SCSI Iomega ZIP drive, Iiyama VM Pro 410 - Phew, that's about it
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Well, I'm currently running my G400 Max at AGP x 2 (soon hopefully at 4 x when I get my abit K7V on Tuesday). I know of many ofthers who have successfully managed to get AGP x 2. You could try a larger power supply, but if this doesn't work, try:
 
1. looking for an updated bios
 
2. Reinstalling windows
 
3. The latest Matrox Drivers
 
4. As a last resort, you might consider trying your card in another machine, preferably one with a different MB, see if it then works.

Also make sure that the G400 has an IRQ assigned to it and that it is not sharing one. G400 likes to be by themselves

Hi Again,
OK, motherboard is running latest BIOS (February this year)
Matrox card has latest BIOS & latest drivers.
This is currently a clean install of Win2000.
It was freshly installed less than a week ago.
Friend of mine also has a G400MAX and is having exactly the same problem on a Intel SE440BX-2 Motherboard.
(Hard Lock as soon as you use PowerStrip to modify settings to AGP 2x)
Due to ACPI all of my devices including the Matrox are sharing IRQ11.
I will have to try and get hold of a more powerful power-suply.
 
Not that I doubt PowerStrip, but is there any other software out there that could confirm what speed my AGP port/Card are running at, just for confirmation?
 
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ABit BE6-II, PIII 550, 384MB RAM, G400 MAX, SB Live! Value, Adaptec 2940UW, Intel Pro 100 PCI network card, 20GB ATA-66 7,200 IBM HD, 22GB ATA-66 7,200 IBM HD, Pioneer 6x/32x DVD, Yamaha 4416 CD-RW, SCSI Iomega ZIP drive, Iiyama VM Pro 410 - Phew, that's about it
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