PC Failure

[steve09]

My computer died yesterday, on Monday it flashed up corrupt a few times and a few times it crashed completely. Anyway, yesterday I loaded up TF2 to the main screen and it flashed up corrupt again but this time froze and then the monitor went blank and went to power saving mode (no input to it). Now when I boot my computer up it comes up with Pink vertical lines across the whole width of the screen but at regular intervals, and on the boot mode list (Safe Mode, Safe mode with this and that or this, normal start) there are blocks of pink between the lines, the lines are not solid all the way down but dashed the same pattern for each line. When XP tries to boot normally it shows the XP logo without the pink lines but they are basically black cos they remove some of the logo. Even on the Bios screen this happens. As soon as XP boots to the welcome screen, the monitor flashes what looks like Matrix code but accross the whole screen then once again the monitor turns off completely. I can boot into Safe Mode which is 640x480, it works but the pink lines are still there. And cos its safe mode I cant run GPU-Z or CPU-Z or CPUID Hardware Monitor (this runs but only sees the HDDs) due to the drivers not being able to be loaded by XP (cos its safe mode). I do have the old video card I replaced with my current 7600GT, I will reseat the 7600 first and see if it is the problem which I doubt it is, then I will put the 6200 back in and see if my problems goes away. Hopefully it will, but I have been looking at new hardware anyway: Intel Core 2 Duo E7400, ATI 5750 1Gb Dx11 (so I'm future proof enough to go to Windows 7), all I need next is a decent 775 Mobo and a new PSU. Do not link me to newegg they don't ship internationally.

[RandomGuy]

AHH SPAMMERS!!!!!

but really, that sucks

[steve09]

Well it has been confirmed. Its the video card that has failed. My dad is off work for holidays and he changed the card back to the 6200 and it worked fine. Only NVIDIA AGP cards that he found were 5200s, which I am not gonna get for obvious reasons. I am going to change over to an ATI 3650 which is also 512Mb, mainly cos its about the same if not better than the 7600 was originally. Seen as I could originally play Full HD 1920x1080 WMVs and I now can't, it seems I fried my video card ages ago, tho it was my own fault for not doing anything about it when it was at 100C. When I replaced teh heatsink compound on the 7600 it did go down to about 80-90C ish, so it made a difference, but I assume by then the damage had been done. I am hoping to get much higher frame rates with this new card. I will post back what happens.

[RandomGuy]

the enter key is your friend.

[steve09]

No! It is not my friend, tis my arch enemy. New Video Card in now went for an ATI 3650 mainly cos I could get it right away and I hear good things come from ATI cards so I swapped. Had quite a bit of trouble today with drivers, I tried to update them and it updated the Catalyst Control Software and after that it wouldn't run at all, eventually I had to uninstall everything including the drivers, Then use the latest installer to reinstall drivers and software and it now works. Also had a few problems with TF2 and HL2 as well with things being the wrong size and in HL2 out of place. Anyway I now get better FPS and cooler Temps.