Weird PC problem

[Jimmy B]

Well, think my PC may be off to the repair shop on Monday, but since it's the weekend figured I'd see if anyone here has seen anything like it before.

Basically I'm getting real bad display interference/corruption (lots of red/green/blue lines/pixels flickering about). Its has spells when it clears up completely, like now, then a few minutes later it'll flicker like interference for a while then either clear up completely again or cover the entire screen. Sometimes when it clears up, the foreground window will be fine but if I go back to the desktop, the desktop image will still be corrupted (and then reopening the previous window will be fine again).

Thought at first the monitor was on the blink, but that doesn't add up any more, and the monitor appears to work fine on a borrowed laptop. Figured the graphics card may have fried, but I'd have thought that if that was the case it wouldn't intermittently work alright?

[Haxtor Moogle]

its your video card. Happens when the memory is going bad on it. it is over heating or there is the possibility that it needs to be reset into the socket.

Try taking the card out dusting if off and putting it back in. check to see if the fan is working.

another possibility is that the thermal grease between the heat sink and gpu has dried up and needs to be replaced. very easy to do .

[Blake Seven]

Is it a case of loose cable connection? How did you test the monitor on the laptop? If you used the same lead this would rule out this as a problem, if you left the lead intact and used another then it's worth looking into.

If not, do as Moogle suggests, then off to a good PC shop on Monday with it

PS Check your house for a big EM Pulse generator as something is frying all your electronics, first your gold card and now the gfx card

[Jimmy B]

Cheers for the fast response guys.

Originally Posted by Blake Seven

Is it a case of loose cable connection? How did you test the monitor on the laptop? If you used the same lead this would rule out this as a problem, if you left the lead intact and used another then it's worth looking into.

I wondered about loose connections, especially after remembering my Armegeddon ("this is how we fix problem in Russian space station") and giving the PC case a good boot, which did actually clear it up for half an hour or so. Doesn't seem to work anymore though, and not sure its the ideal fix anyway

But yes, I took the monitor to the laptop with all the leads dangling out of it (only difference is the desktop requires a little adaptor on the end of the lead which the laptop doesn't), so it seems unlikely to be that.

Originally Posted by Blake Seven

PS Check your house for a big EM Pulse generator as something is frying all your electronics, first your gold card and now the gfx card

lol, I had that thought too I'm keeping an eye out for Rodney McKay running around trying to kill nanobots with an overloading EMP generator set up outside my house, but I haven't caught him yet.

My initial theory was that the GC reader breaking caused me to try EVE for a while, and EVE fried my graphics card. Don't see why it should though.

Originally Posted by Haxtor Moogle

its your video card. Happens when the memory is going bad on it. it is over heating or there is the possibility that it needs to be reset into the socket.

Try taking the card out dusting if off and putting it back in. check to see if the fan is working.

OK, cheers Moogle, I'll give that a try

[Jimmy B]

Hmm, took out the card, gave it a good dusting, put it back in. Booted up with open case and a huge external fan blasting cold air inside.

Upon boot up, screen was so messed up I could barely find the way to Shutdown/Restart from the Start menu. Since reboot after that though, you couldn't tell there's ever been a problem.

Well, I'm not confident, but we'll see.

[Jimmy B]

Originally Posted by Jimmy B

Since reboot after that though, you couldn't tell there's ever been a problem.

Yeah, that didn't last

It presumably was a memory thing, rebooting often got it working again for a while. But it'd go crazy again sooner or later. I did actually discover I could play EVE without too much of a problem by playing in windowed-mode and switching window-size every time it went. A new clean window would appear (while the rest of the desktop remained trashed).

Didn't find any similar workarounds for anything else though, so off to the repairshop it has gone.

[centech]

There are computer repair shops? o_0

Have them change the oil while its there..

[Marmac]

It does sound like a graphics card/memory problem there.

If you were considering an upgrade now may be the time to do it.

Out of interest, what rig and OS do you have?

[Jimmy B]

Originally Posted by Marmac

It does sound like a graphics card/memory problem there.

If you were considering an upgrade now may be the time to do it.

Out of interest, what rig and OS do you have?

Yeah, I'd like to upgrade it anyway but I gave that a try 18 months ago and gave up in the end.

If I recall right its 3200 AMD Athlon, XP, 9800 Radeon AIW. I got a much improved graphics card about 18 months ago but apparently the motherboard was incompatible with it. Then I had a saga with it in a shop for about 3 weeks on and off after they changed the motherboard half a dozen times and kept screwing it up. Gave up in the end and just went back to the 9800.

It's sufficient for everything I use it for, so I figured I'd make do with it until EU goes Cry2 and then see what I need from there.

Originally Posted by centech

There are computer repair shops? o_0

Have them change the oil while its there..

What kind of oil would you recommend?

[BlkRb0t]

Had the same problem a few months back, the Graphics card was fried.