Crashing, video related i think...

I have recenty been having trouble with my computer.
I turn my computer off at night and recently when I have been booting up in the morning I will have a black screen.

The computer is on and I can hear everything starting up, even my monitor lights up, however the screen is black and it forces me to power off / back on.
After I do this, sometimes the resolution is low like 600 and the screen is fuzzy and faded looking. This also forces another reboot, and finally everything "looks" normal.

However when I load certain programs such as World of Warcraft I hear the xp sound (dun dun) that happens when you would disconnect a mouse or keyboard. Also when I load a game like warcraft 3 that changes my screen as in a fullscreen application I crash.

I was told about this site, and with my limited knowledge of computers I come to you guys for some advisement. Hopefully a reformat is not needed.
Thanks.

 

It sounds as though you have a problem with your display adapter (ie: video card).
Go to your Device Manager
Start>Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager
and look and see if there are any question marks or exclamation points showing.
Let us know and we'll take you through the next step.

 

There are none showing.
Also I have downloaded the current directx and drivers and uninstalled/reinstalled video card and drivers.

That is what I have done thus far.

 

OK that covers the next couple of moves.
Assuming that your driver is fine and the video card is properly seated, then the next most likely cause is a corrupt system file.
Run System File Checker
Start>Run>sfc /scannow
This may ask for you to insert your OS (XP - Vista) unstall disk into your CD drive.

What is the make, model and OS of your computer?

 

I am using XP Pro, and someone swiped my cd, so I cant run that, is there something else I can do at the moment? I need to make some calls and see if i can find a cd i guess.

 

You can try the SFC even without having the CD.
Some manufacturers put copies of the system files on the hard drive. SFC can use them for its comparison.
If you don't have the files on your HDD then you can simply abort the SFC.
One thing to note, if you do successfully run the SFC you will need to reinstall all your Windows updates.

 

I have not run windows update for sp3 yet, should i do so? The SFC has been asking for my cd each time it looks for a file, so i had to abort.

 

another way to eliminate if it's hardware related is to boot into safe mode, and see if you still get a problem. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315222

 

I'd hold off on SP3 for a while.
It would be best if you can borrow an XP CD.

 

I got a kick out of the comment you have to reinstall all your critical updates after a successful sfc scan. To see if you can get the scan to go a little further, what you can do is to download SP3, extract it and then burn it to cd so the sfc will look in its i386 folder for your files. The command to extract sp3 can be found in any slipstream SP tutorial. Or you can borrow a friends disk, you don't have to enter and serials to scan a hard drive.

Heres one:

Code:

http://apcmag.com/how_to_create_a_bootable_xp_sp3_cd.htm

look below the "Step 1 - Preparing the Data" near the bottom where you will see a run box command "D:\XPSP3\windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu.exe –x"
which extracts the file from the exe to the same folder its in XPSP3 in this instance. You could also use winrar to get the files out of the exe.

heres xpsp3:

Code:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5B33B5A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4&displaylang=en

just copy all the files to a cd, it doesn't have to be bootable like a regular XP disk, you just want to use it for "sfc /scannow" thats what you type in the run box (without the quotes of course) to do the system file check.

After all that I just have to say, I don't think corrupt system files are your problem. I would try testing your memory with Memtest86 on a boot floppy with the pc set to boot from floppy of course, and maybe test your hardrive(s) with the manufacturers diagnostics. Also turn off the PC completely, open it up and pull and reseat the video card if you have one and then check the connections (also reseat) at both the card and the monitor. I once had a problem with an LCD monitor where the connections (both power and DVI) plugged upwards from the bottom. Some how my power plug worked its way loose enough to still show power on the screen but not to run the monitor. After I pushed it back up, problem solved.