broken graphics card?

MaD_aTTaCk · October 28th, 2005, 01:49 PM

I have had a packard bell ixtreme 6082 for the last couple of years, with few problems. the specs are as follows:

windows xp
digimate 17" tft monitor (res 1280x1024)
agp motherboard (8x)
athlon xp 2700+
512mb pc2700 ram
gigabyte radeon 9200se
80GB 7200rpm HDD (Maxtor)
1x Toshiba DVD-rw drive

A few weeks ago, about 1 in 10 boots, just before the log in screen, the monitor displayed lots of opaque vertical lines (you couldnt see anything behind)down the screen. These appeared to change colour slightly when i moved the mouse. However, after restarting the computer ( pressing button on front) it seemed to work fine, so i put up with it

UNTIL NOW:a few days ago, after booting normally, i left it running unattended. When i returned the same thing had happened. I restarted and this happened again a few hours later. After failing to reach the desktop after restarting (which it did before), i restarted again. this time it said that " windows has recovered from a serious error", and that the cause was the graphics driver.

this has reoccured several times, and each microsoft crash analysis has stated something about the gpu. I then cleaned the inside of the computer( especially the graphics card) with a hoover, as the room it was in had just been rearranged and i thought that it being moved may have stired up dust.

After this not seeming to make a difference I updated my ati driver from 5.7 to the latest (5.10), ( this automatically set my agp speed back to 8x, which i had lowered to make bf2 work) which seemed to stop the start up failures. However, a few minutes ago it randomly restarted itself, and the monitor showed no-signal. After restarting again, the crash analysis stated that the cause was a device driver.

DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS? It sounds as if the graphics card is bust to me, but i was about to buy a new nvidia one anyway, but if the computer is the problem then i could be wasting my money. PLEASE HELP!

EXreaction · October 28th, 2005, 02:10 PM

Well, it sounds like either a heat, or a power problem...probably not a heat problame since you have a 9200se...so what is that make/model of your power supply?

MaD_aTTaCk · October 28th, 2005, 02:36 PM

My PSU is an fsp group ( which is a fairly high quality company-i think), details are below:

AC INPUT:220-230v '3A' 50-60Hz
MAX OUTPUT POWER:280w
DC OUTPUT:+3.3V 15.0A(ORG) +5v 25.0A(RED)
+12V 16.0A(YEL)

+5V 2.0A(PURP) -12V 0.4A(BLUE)

(-)----(.----(+) +12V 0.8A

(+3.3V&+5V)=160W MAX

Im pretty sure its not the psu, as if it was, not just the graphics card would be having problems (especially as its a 9200se).

is it possible i have a virus?

EXreaction · October 28th, 2005, 04:44 PM

Ya, fsp's are good...
Open up your case, and have a house fan blow into it...then see if it still does it.

MaD_aTTaCk · October 28th, 2005, 06:50 PM

ok i will, but why would my pc suddenly start overheating? the gpu doesnt have a fan so it couldnt be that which has stopped working.

If it was overheating:
1.i would see artifacts in games (which im not),
2.and surely it wouldnt say it was a driver problem?
3.Why would this occur at start-up?
4.Why would it appear to be random?

5.also, in everest the temps seem fairly normal:

Motherboard 28*(82f)
cpu 56*(133f)
hdd 37*(97f)

do u think that upgrading to a leadtek 6600gt with the improved fan (which i was about to do anyway before this started) would cure the problem. (or maybe just make it worse?)

mycomputerdied · October 28th, 2005, 07:04 PM

i had this problem last week. its not the graphics card fault its the direct x.
so it must be your direct x is corrupted or doesnt work properly with the graphics card.
to solve the problem reinstall direct x because i had the same problem for awhile and it was annoying. i see this problem all over the web. trust me