Monitor or Graphics card??

[oscar]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Well, looks like problem is NOT solved. Turned computer on this morning and no output to monitor.

So I did what I did last time - pulled up the BIOS screen and waited for the red letters to turn yellow - turnd base on, and now its rebooted in to windows fine with no problems!!

Any ideas ??

[mauijim]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

What type/make of graphics card do you have? Do you need to plug a power lead onto the graphics card using a small molex type plug? I have seen this before and it was a power issue to the card - obviously this would only apply if you do need to plug in a power lead.

I would say it is almost 0% that the mobo is the issue; this looks like it's the card itself or a potential power supply (PSU) issue.



MJ

[oscar]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Card is a Nvidia Geforce 7600gs - so now know its PCIe.

Computer now keeps crashing and rebooting from a serious error

[mauijim]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Card is a Nvidia Geforce 7600gs - so now know its PCIe.

It is quite rare for a graphics card to die completely. I recall about 2 in over 25 years of working on PCs so let's hope you haven't been unlucky. I find that if someone uses the PC for a game that must run in a predefined resolution the monitor switches as defined by the graphics card and this can corrupt the drivers over time. The 175.xxx release of driver from Nvidia was poor and had many issues

This could be a driver issue so try the following procedure.

1) Go to Control Panel
2) Double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon
3) Select the NVIDIA Windows Display Drivers from the list of programs and remove them

It is vital you remove the old drivers first followed by the user profiles. Usually when you remove Nvidia drivers it asks if you want to delete the user profiles - answer YES.

Reboot your PC and allow it to start as normal. If it finds the graphics card then cancel the install of drivers by windows. I am not sure what version OS you have but simply cancel the installation no matter what version.

Visit this link Nvidia Drivers

If you use Internet Explorer you can use their "auto detect your GPU" That is about the only time I ask people to use Internet Explorer.

If not just use the section below the auto-detect feature as shown below

Geforce
GeForce 7 series
Your OS system
English UK

Install the package, reboot and then try again.

That should hopefully help you.

MJ

PS. I just read the thread from the start and I noticed you have changed the monitor, re seated the card BUT.....did you try another lead? I know that seems really obvious but if you have a dodgy pin (loose/bent) or a possible fault inside the cable it can produce an error similar to what you are describing

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

do you happen to play World of Warcraft?

There seems to be a lot of graphics issues when you use this..... Just wondering like.

I suspect your card has died, failing that the only thing I would consider is upgrading the PSU, drivers or checking the fans - it could be overheating, not enough power or faulty card. I had similar with the GEForce 7800 GTX cards and these were like a few hundred each!

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

It is quite rare for a graphics card to die completely.

Not nowadays what with the demands placed on the cards from some of the latest games - it's actually a lot more frequent than you'd think.

In the last 10 years before sticking to laptops, I have maybe went through 5 on various PC's..... I even bought a fully encased top end water-cooling system that directly cooled the Graphics and Processors but the bugger still crashed. I replaced cards and removed the sims (that was the game that was being used by the daughters) and never had the problem again.

So my guess was it was a sims issue, where it burned out the graphics card - basically.

[oscar]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Dont use the pooter fof gaming - only net basically.My mate MIGHT have a spare card - if he has thats the first port of call.

Mum is adament its the HD failing! - Cant see that like!

Reinstalling the drivers is now a now go anyway - as above, pooter keeps crashing and rebooting now.

[mauijim]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Not nowadays what with the demands placed on the cards from some of the latest games - it's actually a lot more frequent than you'd think.

In the last 10 years before sticking to laptops, I have maybe went through 5 on various PC's..... I even bought a fully encased top end water-cooling system that directly cooled the Graphics and Processors but the bugger still crashed. I replaced cards and removed the sims (that was the game that was being used by the daughters) and never had the problem again.

So my guess was it was a sims issue, where it burned out the graphics card - basically.

I only stopped doing full time stuff on PCs last year after my accident and never had many GPU failures. I know they can fail but generally it is down to user factors (not suggesting yours was) where they use the incorrect PSU with poor voltage rails and insufficient available power. The voltage falls and rises and this kills the GPU over time, especially as you say with games that are graphic intensive. The other problem is incorrect ventilation within the PC case and high temperature is the killer for all electronic components especially GPUs. There should be a front fan that sucks air in and a rear (near the top) which blows and acts as an exhaust. There should be more fans TBH but I've worked on brand new PCs where they have the fans setup incorrectly or not even fitted to the front.


The heatsinks and fans that come with most graphics cards will suffice for general use but for serious gamers they should look at a custom cooler or as you mentioned, water cooling. Sadly this is beyond most users because they have to remove the cheap 50p fan and 20p heats ink, clean the heatsink paste etc etc. I find Zalman make some great custom GPU coolers like the VF770 as they will bring down the temperatures to suitable levels.

My setup is water-cooled with a solid copper GPU cooler that cost £80 and my son has the same. He used to play games non-stop and he never had a problem in years. I've never changed from the the older 8800GTS which is plenty fast enough although very power hungry and generates enough heat to make toast!

I hope it is a driver issue for Oscar and he doesn't need to buy a new graphics card.

MJ

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Haha, small world. I was importing components back in 1998 when desktop PC's were just coming into mainstream fruition (i.e. cost wise). We were one of the main distributors for OCZ Memory and DFI Lanparty MoBo's - as you'll know, both were designed to be "overclocked" and if you bust the component then they'd replace them, as they wanted people to clock their products for best performance.

Them were the days - was minted

[mauijim]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Dont use the pooter fof gaming - only net basically.My mate MIGHT have a spare card - if he has thats the first port of call.

Mum is adament its the HD failing! - Cant see that like!

Reinstalling the drivers is now a now go anyway - as above, pooter keeps crashing and rebooting now.

Okay so it could still be a driver issue

Start the PC in safe mode as this will not load the full drivers.

If the PC starts in safe mode and doesn't keep rebooting then you may have a chance of getting it to work again

Remove the drivers for the NVidia card then reboot again into normal mode. Does this stop the PC rebooting? If it does then try to install the latest drivers as per the instructions I gave in an earlier post.

Hopefully this will work...if not then as Niddy suggests, you may have fried the GPU

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Does the MoBo have on-board graphics card? If so take out the PCI-e and head into bios and set the monitor to default on-board?

Or the other way to check...

right click on the desktop -> Properties -> Hardware (Device manager tab) -> Click the + next to the monitor -> does it show more than one graphics display? For instance you're looking for your card i.e. GEForce 7600 then another called something like "Intel Integrated Graphics"......?

Please clarify.

[mauijim]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Haha, small world. I was importing components back in 1998 when desktop PC's were just coming into mainstream fruition (i.e. cost wise). We were one of the main distributors for OCZ Memory and DFI Lanparty MoBo's - as you'll know, both were designed to be "overclocked" and if you bust the component then they'd replace them, as they wanted people to clock their products for best performance.

Them were the days - was minted

They sure were! I had my children later in life and they cannot believe I had no computer at school. Because I worked in IT they assumed computers had always been around but it was many years after school that the BBC, Commodore or Spectrum hit the world.

In one of my early jobs I was designing a RAM chip that could hold a whole 1 megabyte of data It was considered radical and cutting edge at the time. I was responsible for the multiplexing algorithm and it was the most tedious brain killing job you could imagine. I had to work in a clean room with a suit that looked like the ones they use in bio hazard situation

I went through Uni with no personal PCs but did work on a Cray Mainframe which was the size of a house and totally useless when compared to today's desktops!! It's just amazing how fast technology has moved on.

I must be getting old!!

MJ

[mauijim]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Does the MoBo have on-board graphics card? If so take out the PCI-e and head into bios and set the monitor to default on-board?

Or the other way to check...

right click on the desktop -> Properties -> Hardware (Device manager tab) -> Click the + next to the monitor -> does it show more than one graphics display? For instance you're looking for your card i.e. GEForce 7600 then another called something like "Intel Integrated Graphics"......?

Please clarify.

Great minds...I was going to ask that. You can get a situation where the BIOS crashes and loads the defaults. This could mean the onboard and Nvidia are trying to use the same IRQ or resources. If you check the model number we can check if onboard is fitted.

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

They sure were! I had my children later in life and they cannot believe I had no computer at school. Because I worked in IT they assumed computers had always been around but it was many years after school that the BBC, Commodore or Spectrum hit the world.

Haha - remember the old Spectrum; horace goes skiing / horace and the spiders etc - memories eh?

The ZX Spectrum, hold it upside down and the bloody keys fell out - what a farce that was. Instead of providing calipers to hold the keys in place they gave a printout of instructions of where each key belongs so you knew how to rebuild it

I do miss my old SNES - I had a 16bit processor and was well chuffed even though all my mates were using the PS1 - thing is though, I had a copydeck thus all my snes games were on floppy and only cost £1 each

When I eventually got a PS1 I snapped the lid off so that I could use copies as you kinda bumped it to skip the copyright protection.

Wow, those were the days - with my Rabbit phone

[philnicandamy]

Re: Monitor or Graphics card??

Never had a speccy....started with a zx81 then a commodore vic 20!!