Dead GFX Card?

[Pottsy]

Hey guys,

I do know what i'm doin, but just thought i would get a second opinion lol.

Earlier my monitor decided to turn itself off, now at a glance (I haven't looked inside yet lol) it seems to me as the GFX Card has copped it because i restarted my PC an it worked on the boot screen (Next to no graphics needed) but as it came to the XP log in screen, it turned off again.

Now what that says to me is that the monitor works, but when it needs graphics it will turn off. I won't know for sure till tmrw when i check properly.

It may also be an over heating problem (Which i will also find out tmrw since it will have all night to cool down lol)


Any opinions or suggestions on other possible problems will be greatly appropriated.

 

[Silent]

Do you get any error or just a shutdown?

have you tried the onboard gfx to test it is the card (im assuming it plug and play)

it could be just overheating....whenever my cards have died the screen just freezes orange lines then reboot and i wouldnt even get the boot screen, i replaced it and it worked fine...how old is the card?

 

[AgentSmith]

before chucking the graphics card i would check the monitor. i have a hp monitor that started playing up i.e screen going blank and stuff and it turned out to be the power up convertor in the monitor.

 

[Pottsy]

Ok, analysis...

After giving my PC the night and most of the day to chill i turned it on and it seemed to work fine.....for 5 mins lol.

So i know the screens works. When i turn it on now the boot screen is jibberish (eg. putting a 'w' where an 'e' should be) and is covered in '!' lol...then it doesn't even get to the loading screen an just leaves me with a black screen. Also doesn't reboot, just sits there till i turn it off myself

Upon looking inside the case, the GFX Card works fine, but doesn't however mean thats not the problem.

So i've taken it down to 2 reasons...
1. The HDD has corrupted (Hence no loading and incorrect use of letters)
OR
2. Damaged/Broken GFX Card, turning off the screen whenever graphics are requested.

 

[Silent]

Test with another card first, if the hdd was faulty/dead it would say insert proper boot disk...but considering it is booting up to loading screen that suggests the hdd is fine, so test your card it might even be the card slot on your board thats faulty, its definitely not a monitor problem.

 

[chimera]

Had the same shut-down before, check temperature, visually check both fans working. With me a fan had failed, when cpu temperature got to a certain level it shuts down system.

That's the first check.

After that I would remove gfx card and boot with onboard graphics.

If still no joy it's the hard drive.

IMO

 

[Skyline]

When my card died, the monitor worked fine, but the colours were all distorted and pixelated. Replaced the card and worked fine.

To me yours doesnt sound like a card problem.

 

[lewis]

if your graphics card is shot your bios would inform you of this on startup as it's happened to me before (ity shouls anyway). Have you tried running windows in safe mode? have you tried taking your graphics card out and running from onboard graphics?

 

[AgentSmith]

if your graphics card is shot your bios would inform you of this on startup

that must be some expensive motherboard to be able to tell you that!!!

Ok, analysis...

After giving my PC the night and most of the day to chill i turned it on and it seemed to work fine.....for 5 mins lol.

So i know the screens works. When i turn it on now the boot screen is jibberish (eg. putting a 'w' where an 'e' should be) and is covered in '!' lol...then it doesn't even get to the loading screen an just leaves me with a black screen. Also doesn't reboot, just sits there till i turn it off myself

this HAS happend to me before and it was to do with the graphics card but not the card, it happend to me when you card sucks too much juice through the pci-e slot (forgot to use the extra power connector on the MB for extra power) not sure if this applies to you but its the only time i have seen it.

 

[Pottsy]

I believe i found the problem...

I figured i should test the card first, considering that if i was wrong its not hard to change back.


I booted up in safe mode and it worked fine...long story, short, i ended up disabling the GFX driver, funnily enough this worked and i booted up just like normal without any problems.

Now i had access to my PC, i did a little digging into my driver, and it seems that the latest driver was the 6th June (Same time the problems started). Well thinking about all i really did by removing the driver was taking away access to the card.

So is it the driver at fault or the card?

P.S: The boot screen is still screwed, this may suggest it uses the card on boot up and the onboard when windows starts, what you think? lol

 

[lewis]

that must be some expensive motherboard to be able to tell you that!!!

not really... my graphics card failed and it wouldn't even boot up to windows as the bios informed me of a faulty graphics adapter...


well if you have disabled your graphics card it shouldn't use it at all. And now it's working that the card is disabled....? can you not roll back to an earlier driver and see if this fixes the issue? then it will narrow down that it's a driver problem and not the card. Out of curiosity what model Gfx card are you running.

 

[Silent]

not really... my graphics card failed and it wouldn't even boot up to windows as the bios informed me of a faulty graphics adapter...


well if you have disabled your graphics card it shouldn't use it at all. And now it's working that the card is disabled....? can you not roll back to an earlier driver and see if this fixes the issue? then it will narrow down that it's a driver problem and not the card. Out of curiosity what model Gfx card are you running.

good point.

You would be wise rolling the driver back or completely uninstalling it, including regedit.

then install a previous version or a newer version...what card are you running....