GPU died, or...?

Here's some background info on the parts. About two weeks ago, I upgraded my main PC that I use to game and such, so I moved most of the old parts to another case, reinstalled SP3 XP Home. Here are the specs for the old parts, which are about 2 years old except for the GPU, which is 5 years old.

PSU: OCZ500SXS 500W ATX12V
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX
Memory: CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775
GPU: SAPPHIRE 100154 Radeon X1800XT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3
HDD: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

Now two weeks ago, everything was working fine. I installed drivers for everything, kept temps monitored and it was around 30-35 idle which is fine. I was adding about 15 GB's of songs to my MP3 player yesterday, so I just let it do its thing while I went back to my main PC. When I came back 4 hours later, I found that the monitor was in sleep mode. This is normal since I forgot to set the screen saver / power saving settings so it doesn't do that. However when I tried to move the mouse, nothing happened and it monitor still showed a black screen.

So I hit the reset button. The monitor still showed a black screen. I was about to hard power it down by holding the power switch, but then I heard it play the sound it makes when Windows finishes loading up. At this point, monitor still showed nothing. I hit the power switch, and it played the shutting down sound. After it finished powering down, I waited a few seconds and powered up again. This time I got display on the monitor, and it booted up fine. I thought maybe it was a fluke, so I went ahead and watched a video on Youtube. Computer completely locked up after 2 minutes of watching. A few seconds after it did, I heard a noise inside my computer. I'm not sure as to what it is, but it sounded like something stopped whirling, maybe the HDD.

I powered down the PC again by holding down the power switch, waited a few seconds, and turned it back on. This time it didn't even post. The HSF kept running at max speed, and the HDD activity light in front of the case blinked on and off in intervals of 2-3 seconds. I decided to power down again by holding down the power switch, and try again. It worked this time for reasons unknown.

The first thing I did after Windows loaded up was to check the temps again. It read 30-35 as usual, so I thought maybe the GPU had problems. I attempted to run another GPU related program, and then my system completely froze with the same symptoms. When I tried to power down and up, it did the same as it did above. At this point I decided to give up as I needed to sleep for work tomorrow.

I'm going to switch out the PSU with another one once I get home, and also the GPU. I've googled this problem and it seems most people have this problem due to after a storm, first time booting, etc. However, I find it strange how it loaded windows without monitor display after I tried the reset button initially. Am I on the right track here, or could it be something else?

 

I WOULD SUGGEST CHECKING OUT YOUR GRAPHICS CARD- IF IT HAS A FAN-HAS IT STOPPED WORKING/LOOSE CONNECTION?
Checkthedriver- did you recently update your graphics driver ?

 

That's what I plan on doing once I get home. I don't move the case much, and it had been working for the 2 weeks when I first moved everything over. You think it could just magically become unloose?

As for the drivers, I updated it along with everything else 2 weeks ago. Nothing else has changed software or hardware wise since then.

 

The lead I was referring to was the gpu fan lead- check its not damaged, and sometimes plugging/unplugging a lead will make a difference, in making certain it has good contact.
I have had problems with crossfire rated cards, when using singly, or, on a non crossfire board. Athough you don't move it much, sometimes just a build up of corrosion on contacts, after five years can happen. Also you could try rolling back the driver, as its not always the latest that works best on a older card.
Good luck

 

Ok, so here's the deal.

I got home, removed GPU, and tried to boot with one stick of memory. It posted. I tried to boot with no GPU, both sticks of memory. It posted. At this point, I decided to add in my old spare GPU, and behold it worked. It booted up like normal, and things seemed to be in order. I monitored temps, and then uninstalled old GPU drivers and installed the new ones in. As for hardware modifications, I unplugged a COM port attached to a metal thingy and a USB PCI thing in order to fit my old GPU in there.

However, I've discovered a new problem. I will keep it in this topic unless some mod feels it would be better to separate it.

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When I try to restart from the start menu, it'll go through the process of restarting and it'll say "PC shutting down" or whatever the windows message is. But then after that, the monitor says signal lost, and then goes black. At this point, I expected the PC to you know... restart, but it doesn't. It just sits there, fan still blowing. At this point, I held the power button for a few seconds, and it powered down.

I tested this some more. The PC shuts down properly, and even the restart button on the front of the PC works. I tried the restart from start menu again, and same problem persists. I can also hit the restart button in front of the PC when the screen goes black, and it'll restart. I've googled this problem and I haven't found a solution to this, so I tried some things on my own.

The only hardware I can think of that'll affect this, is the power / restart / HDD light wires, so I pulled them out and plugged them back in while looking at the mobo manual.
- I've run cmd -> sfc /scannow.
- I've ran some registry cleaner program (CClean).
- I tried system restore back to Tuesday, which is before the day the GPU started crapping out, and also uninstalling GPU drivers again, reinstalling correct ones.
- I've tried chkdsk /f /r, shutting down (since restart obviously doesn't work), and then letting it do its thing. I went to do other things for a few hours since it takes a while, and when I came back the monitor was green lit but the screen was black. I hit the restart button, waited for windows to load up, and then tried start -> restart again. Same problem.

At this point, the only thing I can think of is to just format the HDD and restart XP from scratch again. This is a last resort option though, since it's quite annoying to reinstalling everything again. Anybody have any other suggestions?

 

I was going to edit my above post for an update, but I couldn't find an edit button. I know most people end up not posting the solution to the problem once they find it, but I thought I'd document my discoveries.

Anyway, update. Someone suggested that I replug in back the COM and USB thing attached to metal plates, back into where they originally were. I did that, and still the same problem. At this point I got annoyed and just decided to format and reinstall XP. And behold, the restart from the XP CD worked!

I sat there while it installed, and then tried to restart first thing after it loaded Windows. It worked again! I went ahead and installed mobo drivers and everything else that I needed. Start-> restart still worked after that. Ok, so then windows update, anti-virus, etc...

I've read on another post about a similar problem to mine, that SP3 might be the culprit. I was skeptical of this, but I decided to be cautious anyway. Start - > restart still worked up to the point where windows update suggests updating to SP3. I gave SP3 a shot and let windows update do its thing. Afterwords, restart still worked. It wanted to install 5 more updates after that. Ok, did that and restarted again. I guess I should note that 1 of those 5 updates failed to install for reasons I'm not sure of.

Now after this, it tried to download that same update, but it did not ask me to restart this time. I thought this would be a good time to reinstall the "Zune Software", since my so called "MP3" player from my first post was a 30 GB Zune, and because it required SP3 so I couldn't install it up until now. Ok, installed and I needed to restart yet again. Start -> restart, monitor went black and it didn't restart. Wait, what?

I've always hated the Zune Software bundle that's required to put songs on there, but I didn't realize it was this bad. I immediately powered down via the front case button, and proceeded to uninstall the Zune Software bundle. Tried to restart... same problem. This time I tried system restore back to right before I installed the Zune Software bundle. And still the same freaking problem when I tried to restart. It was late at night and I just didn't feel like dealing with it anymore, so I powered down and told myself I'd deal with it the next day.

So what's the deal? Does the Zune Software bundle really cause this crap to happen, or did that 1 windows update screw everything up? If I remember right, the update was something related to Windows Media. I'm going to try to restore further back to before SP3 was put on there and see if that fixes it when I get home. If that doesn't work, I'm going to have to yet again format and reinstall XP. When I do, I'll try doing the same thing again minus installing the Zune Software.

Morale of the story here? Never buy or give a zune to yourself, a friend, or family members.