Unofficial Tex Murphy

Bout a month back my computer started doing this strange thing where blue pixels would stand out on the monitor and move according to what you were doing. If I was typing they would go to one place, if I was moving the mouse they would move to another. I thought my monitor was dying, but the problem went away so I forgot all about it.

Yesterday I noticed my computer was slowing down a whole lot. I ignored it because I was doing a lot at a time. I started playing a game, and it just froze. No big deal, I restarted and went on with my day. I eventually went to play another game, only to find that right after it loaded it froze too. I tried this multiple time, sometimes it would freeze, sometimes it would blue scree, sometimes it would go completely black.

On restart I noticed that the bios loadout started to mess up. All the words were replaced with parenthesis and random letters and number. When it did this my computer would get to the windows loading screen and freeze, when it didn't do this. It would load as normal.

I repositioned my ram sticks. I tried each ram one at a time, because I have to different types. I did a harddrive check, everything seemed fine. I took out my soundcard and new harddrive but it still froze when you got to a game. So I put everything back in.

So this morning I tried to turn it on. It powered up, but the monitor wasn't receiving a signal. I tried powering up and down a lot of times but nothing worked. I eventually took the soundcard out again and after that it did power up, but it is an eternal restart loop. I put the soundcard back in and yes it does turn on now, but with the eternal restart loop.

So that's where I am. I have a feeling it might be the motherboard. But it could also be the videocard, or even the powersupply. I suppose it could be my ram if all of them went bad at once. What do you guys think?

most likely your graphics card, sometimes the ram on the graphic's card dies, but it could be heat related, have you checked the graphic's card's fan

All the fans seem to be running smoothly. Plus, the computer wont cold start so I don't know if that could be an overheated card.

Also, would a graphics card problem cause windows not to load, or the font of the bios screen to go askew?

My first assumption was graphics card too, when you mentioned that the display started artifacting while in Windows. Bogus graphics cards can cause text to be jumbled or represented incorrectly, even in the BIOS environment. But just to be safe try resetting the BIOS (just in case it may be corrupt) if you can get the screen to stay on long enough to enter your BIOS settings. Alternatively try resetting your CMOS. This can be done by simply removing the little thin lithium battery on your motherboard and leaving it out for 5 minutes before putting it back in, but remember to set your date as soon as you boot up in BIOS otherwise XP will freak out.

If all of those fail then you may have a faulty RAM module. Swapping them around won't fix the issue... so try taking one out, and leaving the others in and repeat the process for each other individual DIMM too see if you can isolate the problem one.

So to recap, in order of what I think may be the issue: Video card, corrupt BIOS, or corrupt memory DIMM.

Try those and let us know how it goes.

-Cub. =o)

Well I took out the battery like and it reset everything. But now when I try to load in it give me "Bootmgr is missing" I tried loading in my windows 7 cd to get it to repair like a website suggested, but it wont load off the cd and still give me the error

Nevermind that. I've gotten the disk to start working now.

Okay I repaired my installation and was off to the races. It booted up no problem, but crashed when I got inside. I tried each of my ram sticks individually in each port and in each instance it froze while I was in game.

Is your vote still for GPU then?

freepizza wrote:Okay I repaired my installation and was off to the races. It booted up no problem, but crashed when I got inside. I tried each of my ram sticks individually in each port and in each instance it froze while I was in game.

Is your vote still for GPU then?

If you are crashing in-game then is will most likely be your GPU.

-Cub. =o)

It likes to crash in game, but it will also crash in the standard windows environment.

freepizza wrote:It likes to crash in game, but it will also crash in the standard windows environment.

Yes well it would do both... but considering it is under a larger amount of stress when gaming (more heat/memory used) you will find it will do it more often in games, but can also crash in Windows if you are doing anything that makes it think beyond it's limitations. For example, I used to have a card that would crash in games (as it was dying) and on some websites that used flash becuase it was a little bit more stressful the standard 2D Windows environment.

-Cub. =o)

Wow! That is really something, Freep. A while back I did the same thing and put my back out chasing those pixies under my computer, through the punchouts on the desk and over top of my fax machine. Crazy little imps!

Sounds like a mess... I hope you get it straighten out with little to no expense...


How old is the computer, any chance it is still under warranty???

sounds like the graphics card to me, if it has a fan take it out & check out the dust. did similar things to my work pc & cleaning it solved the problem.

I have had a pretty similar problem about a month ago. My computer would suddenly shut down with no warning and not be able to start up again. It would power up fine but nothing would show on the screen. The graphics card fan went crazy until I powered down again.

Troubleshooting on the web left me with multiple choices. People said it could be almost anything but most likely the motherboard. So I bought a new motherboard. When replacing the motherboard I found the original cooler for the CPU wasn't working too well, so had to buy a new one of those. None of this worked. I tried troubleshooting on every part, and the same thing would happen over and over again.

There was only one thing left ... A new CPU. That also did the trick. I could finally boot the computer but the problems didn't end there! Soon after I started getting a lot of BSOD's which related both to memory issues and video card issues. Updating graphics drivers helped with the video card issues, but the computer would still BSOD from time to time.

Running a MEMTEST (http://www.memtest.org/ - download ISO, burn to CD and boot up with it) showed me that I had defective RAM. I took one module out and ran the MEMTEST again - this time with no errors. Problem solved! Superb problem to check if your RAM modules have errors.

Well hopefully it's the vid card. I have a 5850 coming. A substantial upgrade from my 8800gt.

My new 5850 just came in the mail. You're best guess was right Cub, My computer is running like a champ.