[chuksteak]

A few days ago while i was playing a game on the computer, both of my monitors went black and the light on them went from green to yellow. I rebooted the computer and the monitors worked fine for about half an hour and then it did the exact same thing, this cycle kept repeating itself to the point where I would get no visual feed at all. Another odd thing is that now the computer locks up at boot, the video card i was using was a ATI radeon x700 pro agp, i put it an old ati Rage and the computer worked fine. I thought it was because the x700 went bad, so i went out and purchased a ATI radeon x1300 , but the exact same problem would happen where the monitors would not get and visual feed and the computer would lock up on boot, except with a single beep. After a failed boot up, i would swap out the card to the ATI rage and it would give me a warning that the computer failed the last boot on checkpoint VCLS. Im pretty sure the power supply or the power connection isnt the problem as the x1300 requires 350w or greater and my power supply outputs 400w. And ive gone over all the connections inside the computer and now I am absolutely clueless as to what is causing the computer to fail on boot like this.

Im running:
windows xp home edition
2.4ghz intel pentium 4
1 gig of ram
80 gig HD

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Welcome!

Were you still getting sounds and other signs that the game was still running and not frozen?

Have you tried the monitor on a different computer?

Please update the graphics driver for whatever video card you are using and go to Start/Control Panel/Power Options and turn off the automatic Stand By mode, the automatic turn off monitor after x minutes, etc.

[Pi rules]

Welcome!

Were you still getting sounds and other signs that the game was still running and not frozen?

Have you tried the monitor on a different computer?

Please update the graphics driver for whatever video card you are using and go to Start/Control Panel/Power Options and turn off the automatic Stand By mode, the automatic turn off monitor after x minutes, etc.

[chuksteak]

Well when i was playing the game, the sound was also noticably frozen.

I tried all the stuff you suggested, still not able to boot up with either of the Radeon X cards

I think at this point ill probably have to take it into a shop because im completely baffled by this.

[kunwon1]

Is this a Dell?

[chuksteak]

Yes , its a dell Dimension 8200

[kunwon1]

Go to Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager. Scroll through the list and see if you see anything with an icon next to it, such as an exclamation point or a question mark. Anything?

[chuksteak]

Nope nothing, i have the drivers loaded for everything

[gerryf]

start > run, type
eventvwr.msc
<enter>


Look under systems and applications for items with red Xs that happened at the SAME time as your problem...list them here.


Also, the ati rage card--pci or agp? and the ati 1300 is pci-e?

[chuksteak]

Well all three of the ATI cards are AGP.

Very peculiar thing happened when i swapped out the video card again, booted it up, had the normal freezing and then i swapped the cards again and rebooted then went to the event viewer. The event viewer doesnt list anything happening during the time of the boot freeze, no applications or anything.

[gerryf]

I'd probably

pull the power supply from a different machine and test it
pull the ram from a different machine and test it

[chuksteak]

Already swapped the power supply out , still nothing.

Not sure if i have extra ram laying around. Gotta wait till my friend gets back in town since hes got a ton of spare parts

[gerryf]

motherboard? Perhaps a bios upgrade...perhaps there is some sort of timing issue that needs addressing

everything set to optimal value or are you pushing the motherboard in some way?

[chuksteak]

Well im not overclocking anything as far as I know, but how would i find out if theres a timing issue?

[gerryf]

sometimes, the timing issue is not something you're doing, but in the basic input/ouput of the machine

What kind of motherboard?


download Everest Home

http://www.geekstogo...d...=show&id=13

unzip it, install it, and then save a report and ATTACH it to your next post.

To do this, go to FILE > SAVE AS

put it on your desktop and give it a file name

Now click the ADD REPLY button on the bottom of this thread, click the BROWSE button beneath the text bo and navigate to your desktop, select your file and click the OPEN button, and then click the ADD THIS ATTACHMENT button next to the BROWSE button

Click Add reply button