Could do with a hand....

[llwyd]

I've come home from college, turned my PC on, only to get as far as the windows loading screen before the screen goes black. The windows log on sound plays and the HDD gets busy but there is no vga signal.... so I thought 'oh well, need a reformat anyway'.

So, In goes the old XP disc (rolling back from vista ultimate), got through the installation proceedure fine, get into windows and proceed to install some Nvidia drivers. Halfway through the installation process, at the point where they initiate, my screen goes black and stays black. So I hit restart and i'm back where I started.

So now i'm sat in safe mode scratching my head. I think Dav0s had the same problem not too long ago.

Oh and last night my CSS was suffering random laggy spots but with netgraph staying pretty clean

Any ideas?

 

[Rastalovich]

Urgh, if u got any other gfxcard - stick it in and see if u get a visual at desktop. Preferably an nvidia.

 

[llwyd]

I've not got anything else

Im in regular windows now, just without graphics drivers. I'm about to try setting my HDD back to 0 with HDDGURU FreeWipe and install windows again, hopefully it's just remnants of so many OS's and drivers causing a problem.

 

[Rastalovich]

Tech babble to skip over ...IF, big IF, u don`t normally turn u`r pc off, or it`s been on for days b4 u turned it off, they can move in their slots - believe it or not. It`s something to do with getting hot then going cold.

This can be a factor with some machine built cases and mobo mounting.

Cos cases, in our example we`re looking at slots, are machined, they can often have a slot-plate-receiving-foot-thing, that prevents the card from being installed in a slot in an even fashion.

U jam in the card, it looks nice`n secure and clips in if it needs to. However it can be tight at the backplate end. Cold u jam it in and it`s fine, but as we know the whole system gets hot and cools down, then repeats.

Tell tale sign of this problem are systems when u have to push components b4 a boot to get it running - once it`s running, getting hot, the components relax and will run for days. U turn it off and u have to go pressing again.

A gfxcard that`s not in correctly, will 99.9999% of the time fully allow a 256 color dos screen, and almost certain allow use under un-complicated drivers. Try anything exotic and it`ll eff.

I`d take the card out and put it back in.

 

[llwyd]

Thanks Rast, should've thought of that.

Setting the disc back to 0 didnt work (it was also surprisngly fast ie. instant)

 

[PP Mguire]

You might have just set the first few hundred meg of the end and start of teh drive to 0s instead of the whole thing. Doing a Low Level format will set the whole thing to 0 and take quite a while if the drive is big.

 

[llwyd]

You might have just set the first few hundred meg of the end and start of teh drive to 0s instead of the whole thing. Doing a Low Level format will set the whole thing to 0 and take quite a while if the drive is big.

The drive has been fully NTFS formatted about 6 times mate, Setting it to 0 is slightly different afaik.

The card is currently in my second pci-e slot, which has strangely allowed me to take the res up a lot higher and run @ 32 bit.

Will try another driver install later.

 

[llwyd]

Right well i've reseated the card and it doesnt crash after installing the drivers. However, it will not do more than.......wait for it........4 BIT colour! WTF!?

 

[PP Mguire]

Seems like you might possibly have a card dieing on you.

 

[Rastalovich]

I had an MX card that did that. Also if u moved a cable the pc would crash. Turning it off and moving the card, then turn back on it`d be ok.

I will say 1 thing, I moved it to another desktop and the card works fine. Additionally the card I replaced it with works fine.. ?!!?!?

I`m convinced this was also down to how the card sat in the mobo`s slot.

4 bit color was exactly the thing. Turn off, wiggle about, and u may get a good screen. In between all this the OS recognizes the card as something different each time.

I dunno, I mean u can try cleaning the slot, be sure the edge-connector grips all "look ok". Clean the edge-connector on the gfx card. Then be sure when u put it in that it lies level with the mobo.

Am I correct in assuming that if the problem with the card was "power", as if u haven`t got the molex in (or similar), the card still boots ok - it`s just flakey when u push it ?? Never tried a molex requiring card without it tbh.

 

[llwyd]

I've cleaned the connector on the card and both PCI-E slots, it improved, but only to the point of 4bit colour. And I mean windows was limiting me to 4BIT, not just general crap quality. I'm currently running 1280x1024 @ 32bit on the secondary PCI-E, which is higher than the first one would go....

Ham will be over shortly with a 7800GT for me to try in it but until then, I'm occupying myself by shooting tin cans / vermin on the farm behind my house from my bedroom window with an air rifle

 

[Rastalovich]

lmao that`s one way.

Another way would be to find a jiffy bag and stick that ASUS i/o plate in it and mail it GD!!

U`r setup at the moment sounds like either the OS or drivers are not identifying the card correctly.

 

[llwyd]

rofl, true. PM me your address and i'll try get it send asap.

I've reformatted a few times now and tried XP and Vista Ult, both with various drivers, none worked. Infact vista wouldnt even get to desktop without drivers.

I've MM'd the power going into the card and it's 12.35, so wouldn't surprise me if somethings cooked lol. And yea, with the 12v out it would still get to desktop