[peyote]

Hello,

something weird has been happening to my computer the last few days. A few days ago I switched my computer on and it botted fine but there were lots of blue lines and other weird colour shapes on the monitor, very soon after boot it froze and so I reset my computer and the same happened again but with slightly different colour and shaped artifacts but this time it froze but the mouse was still able to move across the screen, not move but jump and no icons were responding.

I took the side panal off my computer and resitted the ram, the GPU and cleaned and dust I could see. I swithed it back on and still had the same issue but this time I had the dreaded blue screen of death with a message saying "memeroy dumped ....". Next, I took the ram out and tested each sticjk on its own and still had teh same probelm so knew it wasn't the ram. Think it may be dust I cant see I went out and purchased a can of air to dust and unseen dust hidden away in the nooks and crannies of the GPU. I did this yesturday, switched my computer on and it was working fine all night but today I come home and it just did the same thing again after trying to listen to some tunes on indows media player, the computer froze and wierd artifacts on screen. Just rest it and now im here asking for help and the computer seems to be runnibng fine for now.

This seems to be an intermitent problem as a simple push of the reset button seems to have cured it but I know there is something wrong and this will happen again very soon.

Could this be a faulty GPU ( which is what I think it is ) or a faulty CPU, PSU or something else ??? Like I said, I tested the RAM and still the same fault with each stick (3 sticks in total) and I cleaned all the dust from GPU and CPU and PSU, now im stuck as to what to do next.

My spec is

CPU- E7300 or E740
GPU- 9800GT
RAM- 3x1GB Kingston
PSU- Atrix 650W
Mother board- ASUS P5N-E SLI

I also ran some temp tests with Rivea tuner and nothing seems to be over heating. CPU 35 degrees and GPU 70'ish degrees but I believed this GPU is ok to run at this temp.

Thank you for looking and hope you can help.

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froze again and this time there were just a few specky artifacts on screen and the top and then the bottom of the screen would flicker every second or so.

I am running in safe mode to make this post and seems to be fine. So works in safe mode if it helps.

[peyote]

froze again and this time there were just a few specky artifacts on screen and the top and then the bottom of the screen would flicker every second or so.

I am running in safe mode to make this post and seems to be fine. So works in safe mode if it helps.

[Alzeimer]

Download speedfan and check your GPU temperature.

[peyote]

Something weird again is going on.

I tried to get a temp reading with speedfan and rivea tuner and both are not giving me my GPU temp. I know windows experience index is rubbish to rate how good a computer is but it said "new hardwar detected" so I clicked "update my score" and its dropped from 4.8 to 1.0 ... Also, it took 30 minutes and 5 attempts to boot up in normal mode and my resolution is basic, really blocky and low quality. When I went into control panal and click the nvidea icon to change my res back is said "NVIDEA DISPLAY SETTINGS ARE NOT AVAILABLE ,you are not currently using a dispaly attached to an nvidea gpu"

Also, as I said, my resolution is really low but I also have faint yellow lines across the screen now but hasn't slowed down or crashed/froze as it did befor.


What do you think ?

Edited by peyote, 01 October 2010 - 05:16 PM.

[Alzeimer]

Have a look at your driver information for your card, is it up to date, maybe the drivers are corrupted or your card is overheating or it is just simply on its way out.

Open your NVIDIA control panel and click on system information and it will tell you your driver information. If you cannot get the information and it says you have no card plug in or something similar, your drivers might be corrupted in that case try to uninstall your drivers with the normal uninstall options and if will not let you uninstall them you can use driversweeper to delete your NVIDIA drivers (make sure to only delete videocard drivers and not any other NVIDIA drivers you might have on your system). Then reinstall the newest driver for your card.

[peyote]

How do I know which ones are video card drivers and not any others? I have downloaded driver sweeper and selected "nvidea chipset" and "nvidea display" and "nvidea physx". I selected chipset and display and now have a list of file locations which im guessing are drivers. Which ones should I "clean" ?

[Alzeimer]

Only choose "nvidea display" and "nvidea physx", nvidia chipset are for your motherbard chipset.

Delete all the files under those two.

Did you try to uninstall your previous drivers first.

[peyote]

I cant access nvidea tjrough control panal to uninstall preveous drivers because it says that ta nvidea gpu is not detected. I will use driver sweeper and report back soon.

[peyote]

Removed all drivers using driver cleaner and installed latest drivers from nvidea website, no change

Low resolution and lines across screen in normal mode. Can't access nvidea comtrol panal to change resolution as it say nvidea gpu is not conected to display device. I wasn't getting a low resolution untill tonight. Before it would be normal 1440x900 res but with artifacts and then would freeze but now I have artifacts but a lower res and no freezing/crashing.

Do you think that this is definatly a faulty GPU because I don't mind replacing it I just want this fixed

Could this be a dodgey PSU? Antrix isn't a good brand and it 18 months old now but is 650w.

Should I run more Diagnostics to be sure ?

Edited by peyote, 01 October 2010 - 06:47 PM.

[Alzeimer]

To see if it's your card or not for sure would be to try either another card in your PC or try your 9800gt card in another computer.

May I ask if you have tried another screen just to make sure

[peyote]

Sorted !!!

I plugged my display into a laptop and it worked fine, so a faulty monitor was ruled out.

I went out a bought a second hand GPU, a 8800GTX OC, plugged it in and it worked fine so a faulty GPU was the cause. I notice now that my 9800GT must have gotten louder and louder over the last 18 months because this one is realy quite and is running at 60 degrees instead of 75 degrees which I always thought was too high.

I do have one problem. The new card requires 2x 6pin pci-e connectors but my PSU only has one. I have plugged in the only 6pin plug and it runs fine but a nvidea pop up says that the there is not enough power so the settings have been down graded to compensate s psu good enough ?

[phillpower2]

Have you got a spare 4 pin molex connector on your psu?
If you have you can use an adapter like the one at the attached link to fully power your card;
http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/B0038MON2I

I plugged my display into a laptop and it worked fine, so a faulty monitor was ruled out.

Strange, this would suggest that the card was working and your screen or pc to screen lead was bad
as it was still your 9800GT providing the display to the laptop.

[peyote]

Sorry, when I said display I ment monitor. Tried to use my geek vocabulary

Thanks for the adice on the cable, so you think 650w is ok ? Don't really want to upgrade my PSU if its not up to the job or I will take the card back a nd a lower spec one that uses less power.

[phillpower2]

Yes the 650W psu should be adequate, there is a few different models of your psu
if yours is the same as the one in the link you will be fine as it has an 80+ rating;
http://www.microdire...source=googleps

[peyote]

This is the one I have.

http://www.maplin.co...1&U=P4

Heres the specs of the PSU
AC input: 115v AC/230V AC 60/50Hz
DC output max:

+3.3V...+5V...+12V(DC1)....+12V(DC2)...-12V...+5VSB
30A....30A.......16A.............16A............0.8A.......2.5A

Edited by peyote, 02 October 2010 - 03:51 PM.