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Artifacts PC problem - need advice
(11 posts, started )
Artifacts PC problem - need advice
Hi guys

I need some help with diagnosing a problem which has started occuring totally out of the blue with my computer. My pc was running fine today for hours without any problems but when i had a hour break for dinner i left it running, when i got back i tried waking it up from power saving mode as the monitor turned off, my music was still running. But after moving the mouse and monitor powering up no picture appeared. Tried ctrl atl del to try and an some application that may have caused the black screen but no joy. I then had a quick 1-2 second flash of the desktop and it was all mangled up with artifacts and blank windows the type you get when you click something and windows hangs.

I then tried to reset my system, as the bios screen where all the drives are detected popped up after the reset i noticed the writing was slighly screwed up with few pixes within it missing, as that screen disappeared i then had a full screen of purple artifacting all over, that screen is usually just black so i got a bit worried. When the Windows xp logo and loading bar appeared, there were more artifacts and vertical lines with again pixels missing within the lettering, the loading bar then froze for about 20s and it just hanged it then slowly got going but it wasn't normal, it was all too slow. Then the when the welcome screen was meant to appear i just had a black screen, i could still hear the music and my hdd was showing that things were loading as normal. So it reached the desktop after few more seconds of blackness but my screen stayed black, i then had constant flashes of my desktop for about 2 s and it kept flashing between black screen and desktop. All off the menus were screwed up and things were artifacted.

Then my monitor went black and kept turning on and off (you know that bit when it gets a signal and you hear a dingggg sound and when it turns off you hear the static??? well that kept happening continuously.

I tried going into safe mod but the safemode selection screen is also scred so much that things are unreadable on it so i had to guess what to press to get into safemode but no joy, in same mode it did the same thing as it normal mode??? flashes with black screen, freezing, artifacts and it was just dead. See pictures from safe mode what my screen looked like when i loaded things up. (had to take it with my camera)

It looks like it is either the graphics card or motherboard.

Just to mention, few weeks ago my psu exploded, the psu seemed to give too much voltage to my graphics card as i had severe overheating problems and the card was running at 145C at times due to the faulty psu which may have damaged the card which gave up today..

Anyone else experienc
Attached images
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I'd say it is your graphics card that is at fault.
#3 - ReVoX
probally problem of the graphic card, you can test with other graphic card?
uhm, when the loading bar of windows XP appear, you missing pixels? and it's blue? o in color.
I am afraid i have no second graphics card or pc where i can try it i am on my laptop at the moment.

The loading bar screen has artifacts and lines mainly around the bar, the bar itself is fine but it does freeze and takes ages to actually loads things up..

I am really thinking that the faulty psu that blew up few weeks ago damaged my nvidia6800gt which i think gave up today like you say. It does appear to be graphics related especially when i wasn't at the computer when things started going wrong. I do have quite a demanding screensaver which may have caused the card to pack up due to the psu damage.

Cheers for the info guys

mad
Well the fact it was running 145C I am surprised you didn't turn it off, that sort of heat says the cooler is shot and from memory you don't want nVidia cards to go over 70C. I would suggest a replacement cooler, but it sounds as though all the damage has been done.
Quote from Madman_CZ :Hi guys

I need some help with diagnosing a problem which has started occuring totally out of the blue with my computer. My pc was running fine today for hours without any problems but when i had a hour break for dinner i left it running, when i got back i tried waking it up from power saving mode as the monitor turned off, my music was still running. But after moving the mouse and monitor powering up no picture appeared. Tried ctrl atl del to try and an some application that may have caused the black screen but no joy. I then had a quick 1-2 second flash of the desktop and it was all mangled up with artifacts and blank windows the type you get when you click something and windows hangs.

I then tried to reset my system, as the bios screen where all the drives are detected popped up after the reset i noticed the writing was slighly screwed up with few pixes within it missing, as that screen disappeared i then had a full screen of purple artifacting all over, that screen is usually just black so i got a bit worried. When the Windows xp logo and loading bar appeared, there were more artifacts and vertical lines with again pixels missing within the lettering, the loading bar then froze for about 20s and it just hanged it then slowly got going but it wasn't normal, it was all too slow. Then the when the welcome screen was meant to appear i just had a black screen, i could still hear the music and my hdd was showing that things were loading as normal. So it reached the desktop after few more seconds of blackness but my screen stayed black, i then had constant flashes of my desktop for about 2 s and it kept flashing between black screen and desktop. All off the menus were screwed up and things were artifacted.

Then my monitor went black and kept turning on and off (you know that bit when it gets a signal and you hear a dingggg sound and when it turns off you hear the static??? well that kept happening continuously.

I tried going into safe mod but the safemode selection screen is also scred so much that things are unreadable on it so i had to guess what to press to get into safemode but no joy, in same mode it did the same thing as it normal mode??? flashes with black screen, freezing, artifacts and it was just dead. See pictures from safe mode what my screen looked like when i loaded things up. (had to take it with my camera)

It looks like it is either the graphics card or motherboard.

Just to mention, few weeks ago my psu exploded, the psu seemed to give too much voltage to my graphics card as i had severe overheating problems and the card was running at 145C at times due to the faulty psu which may have damaged the card which gave up today..

Anyone else experienc

There's your problem. Your Graphics Card core was running 45 degrees hotter than what is needed to boil water. Sounds like you've just killed the card, overheating will corrupt things - i'm suprised that with temperatures like that it didn't blow the damn thing up.
Well it wasnt the card at fault, the faulty psu that blew up on me seemed to be overclocking it with too much voltage. As soon as i replaced the psu the card ran fine for another 4 weeks until today. I was playing lfs yesterday with it only yesterday.

Yeah the fact that it ran at 145c after 2 mins of farcry and 110c idle for so long was a miracle with my old psu. I dont usually check the temps so i didn't know the card was actually over heating until i was playing a game when i use to get some artifacts after few minutes. I thought it was the card four weeks ago when i first spotted the heating problems, little did i know that my old psu was causing all the problems. After the replacement of the psu i thought it was all ok as card idle temps were 60C but i guess today it just gave up from the damaged caused weeks ago...

Will have to get some cheap card tomorrow.... i hope it isnt the mobo!!! Dont have much money for pc components right now.

mad
I would say I have a spare card you could try out but I don't live round the corner anymore...

I am in agreement that the primary suspect is the graphics card.
I'm having kinda similar problem. I just tried to start my computer and got lots of artifacts on the screen, the computer locked up and didn't even get to memory tests/bios screen. Nothing more was visible on the screen than the artifacts. I shut the machine down from the power button and started it again. The artifacts where still there but this I could see the normal bios texts. This time it went all the way to trying to start windows (asking the usual safe mode or normal start etc.) but then my screen lost signal and I'm guessing the machine got locked down again. The power buttons didn't do anything so I had to sgut it down from the psu switch.

After I turned my comp off I opened my case to see if there was anything wrong there. No dust, heatsinks and fans properly attached and all cables ok. Tried to start my computer again and as for my surprise all went well this time and as far as I can see everything is ok for now. All fans are rotating and temps are ok too...

What was that? Is it my graphics card slowly letting go or was it just one-off? I don't really have any spare parts to expirement and as I said it works ok now...

My GPU is Palit geforce 7800GT on which I have changed the zalman vf900 heatsink/fan (I think it's 900, no idea though).

(I already got a bit excited of having a proper excuse to upgrade my hardware )
Hi Hyper,

The problem I was having at the time i posted these pictures unknown to me was that the power supply was slowly going (it was 3 months old) It started to overload my graphics card with too much power which caused it to over clock and seriously overheat. My graphics card was reaching 145C at time after 2 minutes of playing and it wouldnt even display the desktop properly as you saw. I then replaced the psu and all was fine, card temps were back to normal and games played ok but the damage to the card was done as it packed in few days later completely.

It may be your graphics card slowly dieing but with pcs it can also be a number of other hardware components that could be causing the problem. Best to test if you can the components in another computer
Well, again it is all working ok. I'll just wait and see for now. Thx for the info though

Artifacts PC problem - need advice
(11 posts, started )
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