My desktop has gone wiggy.

I have a P4 3GHz rig that I built a few years ago (whenever the P4 3GHZ was top of the dung heap). It's been a good machine that never had any failures until now. The machine has an Intel D875PBZ mobo, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card, WD 80Gb HD, 1 Gb memory, Soundblaster, blah, blah, blah.

I have not made any hardware chnages since I added a G15 about 3 months ago. When I turned on the computer Sunday and opened up a game to play, the screen got a bunch of vertical lines with colors in them. I followed standard east indian practices and rebooted the computer. Again with the lines. In fact on subsequent reboots I even got the lines on the Windows desktop screen.

What was strange was that opening a separate window or even a new program made the screen normal again for a while. I downloaded the latest vid card drivers and BIOS update and installed both. This did not fix anything.

I tried hooking up a different monitor, thinking that might be the problem. Nope, the lines appear on both monitors I own.

I figured it might be the video card so I bought a comparable Nvidia at Fry's today. I fired up the computer to uninstall the ATI drivers before switching cards, and I can't even get the machine to boot up.

On the first go, I got the lines on the BIOS splash screen and the machine locked up while trying to start Windows XP. On reboot, the computer restarts itself halfway through opening up Windows over and over again. Sometimes it will get to the username/password screen, sometimes not even that far, and then it dumps and restarts (all without having power fail). I got into Windows once, but it produced several errors.

I also tried going in through Safe mode. I got Windows to start, but it blacked out and restarted after I tried to open up the control panel.

At this point I am stumped and I can't even get into Windows to experiment. Anyone have an idea on what is going on? I'm thinking it's not a video card issue anymore.

Windows XP corrupted somehow? (Mind you, it worked fine yesterday, even a couple of reboots after the BIOS update).

Power Supply going out on me?

Hard drive issue?

 

try switching the power cable that goes to the card? if u cant get into windows, mind as well pull the drive and back it up (i have 1.2tb of free storage if you need) and reinstall xp.

there was a patch released last week for xp but i duno what it did... funny a guy at work was getting a very similar problem at home

 

also: does it do the same thing in bios or just in windows? was it doing it durring windows loading screen? login screen? only when fully into windows? safe mode?

kind of a moot point now that windows is fuxxored but it might help you narrow down the cause.


if nothing else id say your activeXs got broken when launching a webinar to do a screen sharey thing with The WebX so that someone could be stealing your megahurtz

 

If you havn't put the new video card in yet.... do that.

 

if it will post but it wont boot then graphix card hotness wont likely mfix it. but i agree its worth a go

 

or u can blame Level3

 

I blame AMD

 

And blame intel cogent telia quest global crossings savvis and all those guys while you're at it too right? :P

First thing first, try running a memtest.

 

Can't blame Intel - they might make my paychecks disappear.

 

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

When I do actually get into Windows (1 in 5 chance), I get an RPC error. Then it attempts to reboot in 60 seconds.

The weird thing is that it was fine yesterday. It could be a cap going bad on the mobo, but I have no way of diagnosing it. I don't want to just start replacing parts until it works. I was planning on building a new gaming rig next month anyway and giving this one to the 14 year old. I hate for it to go to waste since it's still pretty capable (or at least it was).

Fortunately I backed up all of my critical files from the main HD to my 250GB storage HD yesterday. I think I missed one Microsoft Money file.

 

if u need that money file bring it over. we'll drop it in an external or plug it into the tera and u can ftp the file later. MSmoney sucks anyway, **** yo taxes.

if it did the screen **** all the way through post, bios, windows load, and windows.... its probly graphics card. check to make sure the fan on it isnt dead, my old card used to do something similar when the sink got clocked with dust.

other than that? i have a PS u can test on if you want to see if thats the issue, might try swapping the gcard power from something you know works (hd or dvd) to the gcard

 

I'll try switching the card tomorrow.

I pulled it out and the fan was pretty dusty. I'll try blowing it out and reinstalling it first.

Thanks.

 

That was my problem. The fan on my gfxcard actually came loose and fell off. The adhesive got ****ty, but I needed a new card anyway.

 

good call, make sure the sink is completely on. if its not id go grab a new one at frys and get some abrasive grease at home depot. lil of the grease on the the chip, rotate the sink on it gently while its lined up, wipe grease and apply some good thermal paste.

id also check to make sure the female power plug on the card isnt lose / broken, ive had that happen. but it still doesnt account for random boot success, just do what our desktop guys do and hit the reset button until it works (not joking)

 

It definitely sounds like teh grafficks card, but have you double checked the CPU fan?