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Very Bizarre Problem


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#1
Supersonic^

Supersonic^

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I've got a problem...

Friday
Installed CREATIVE AUDIGY 2 sound card Friday morning. Worked fine.

Friday evening I installed a 200GB 7200rpm SEAGATE HDD and replaced three 80mm CASE FANS (molex connectors) with 3 new 80mm CASE FANS with 3pin connectors connected to FAN CONTROLLER. Graphics quite literally ****ed - alternating black & white lines appear on screen, and then Windows restarts itself.

Removed fan controller. Added 3pin-molex converters to case fans. No change, graphics still ****ed.

Disconnected new HD. No change.

Reconnected new HD, disconnected old HD. Partitioned & installed Windows XP Home SP2. Installed motherboard drivers, restarted, installed graphics drivers, and got a 'ZERO DISPLAY SERVICE ERROR'. Restarted, same problem. Tried three different types of drivers, the latest ATI ones, the ones I was using before, and the OMEGA drivers. None worked.

Removed sound card and reinserted graphics card. No change.

Removed case fans. No change.

Tried a different monitor. No change.

Went to sleep.

Saturday & Sunday
Computer fairy did her magic (I don't have a ****ing clue -_-). Computer worked fine for the entire weekend with all my hardware connected (including the new HDD, case fans & sound card) and all drivers installed.

Monday
Worked fine Monday morning.

Got home from work Monday evening and was greeted by the same problem.

Removed video capture card. Problem gone. Fixed?

A few hours later, same problem.

Tweaked around with some nonessential BIOS settings (AGP fast write, aperture size, agp 8x toggle, HDD S.M.A.R.T, etc.). No change. Gave up.

Tuesday
Pretty much same as Monday. Worked in the morning, broken in the evening for about 30 minutes and then seemed to fix itself.

Wednesday
Worked fine in the morning and even worked fine in the evening. A few hours later, the computer hangs and I get the same problem again. Then for the rest of the evening Windows would manage to boot but then hang after a few minutes. The screen would freeze for a second or two and then go black. Strangely, the sound would still work (music still playing and even the media hotkeys worked) and I could even type things.

Thursday
Same problem for Thursday as Wednesday evening. Lasts about 5 minutes before hanging.

Friday & Saturday
Same problem as last friday. Now I've just resorted to using Windows without graphics drivers intalled. Really sucks but it's all I can do. :/

Notes
Booting Windows in Safe Mode always works.
KNOPPIX works.
CPU temperature varies on usage, but always above 40 and below about 50. Average 42ish. Case temperature 30ish. Graphics card temp 36ish (last time I checked).

Specs
AMD Athlon XP 3000 (default cooler)
MSI nForce 2 K7 (default 'safe' settings)
2x 512MB PC3200 (dual-channel disabled)
ATI Radeon 9600XT (AGP 8x & fast write enabled - cache video BIOS disabled - AGP aperture size 256MB)
Creative Audigy 2
Sony DVD+RW (connected to secondary master)
2x 7200RPM HDD (Seagate 200GB [primary master], Western Digital 120GB [primary slave])
1x 3.5" Floppy drive
3x 80mm case fans
1x HDD cooler (2x 50mm fans)

Conclusion
...

T_T


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#2
austin_o

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Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. Try cleaning the previous driver installation and starting fresh. First, go to http://www.drivercleaner.net/ and get Driver Cleaner (it is free). You said you already have the current driver, great. Now go to add/remove programs and remove the current Nvidia driver. Then boot into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner TWICE, each time deleting all that it finds. Then re-boot and install the current driver.
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#3
Supersonic^

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...

What NVIDIA driver? I've never installed an NVIDIA card on this computer, let alone NVIDIA graphics card drivers. The only NVIDIA drivers I have are for my motherboard.

Also, you may have missed something important. I got the problem after a clean installation of Windows on a brand new hard drive. No problems with old drivers then.

Something tells me you didn't even read my post.

Not like it matters, I fixed it myself.
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#4
warriorscot

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That always the first response for your kind of problem no need to get annoyed. Post how you fixed in case others have your problem.
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#5
Supersonic^

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I replaced my CPU cooler. Yup.
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