mcadam's graphics issue....still!!!

OK back from holiday yesterday (yeh it was great - read thread in the lounge!) and computer had the famous graphics issues.

This time I managed to catch the moment on my phone camera, so low quality, but you can clearly see something's up.

If you point yourself to here - http://www.mcadam.33i.org/images/

You can see the 3 images I took, one when I got into safe mode, one when I tried to post here earlier, and one of the bios flash screen at first boot up.

I've just plugged an old Geforce MX440 in and everything's perfectly stable, worked first time.

Is the graphics bye-bye and needs to be repaired?? Luckily it's still under warranty!

 

I didn't see your previous post(s), but let's review what we can see in those photos:

The Safe Mode photo shows an obvious problem, which CAN'T be related to the usual videocard driver, because Windows uses the plain-vanilla generic (built-in Windows) driver when loading into Safe Mode.

Of course, the generic driver MIGHT be corrupted, but examining the screen showing the BIOS details during POST shows a similar problem. During POST, Windows hasn't even loaded, so the problem CAN'T be driver-related. When the computer begins to POST, the videocard BIOS controls the screen, and uses the basic instructions burned into the BIOS chip to activate the display you see on screen; clearly, something is wrong at the most basic level.

Finally, you've told us that you installed a different videocard, and the problem has been resolved; seems to me YOU did all the troubleshooting to diagnose this without any help from us...

IOW, you've answered your own question; since the videocard BIOS controls the video at bootup, and you've eliminated the monitor as a possible culprit (because if the monitor WAS at fault, the problem would have remained even AFTER you swapped the videocards), you've narrowed this down to the videocard itself. It is possible that flashing the videocard BIOS will correct the problem, but doing so might void the warranty, and there are NO guarantees that nothing else will go wrong in the process. Your best option is to have the graphics card replaced under warranty.

Good luck; hope all turns out well for you.

 

Wicked thanks, I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't missing anything obvious.

Heck, I'd even tried a few reformats and clean installs of Windows using different drivers and it still didn't like it.

I'll be off tomorrow to get it sorted, thanks for the input

 

Update - Just taken it back, was confirmed faulty, have to wait a month max for it to be fixed or given a new/better one

 

Glad to know you've got this under control. It seemed to me that you simply needed someone to verify your troubleshooting and diagnosis, and that is what I tried to do. Again, a good job nailing down the faulty hardware, with NO help from me...

Personally, I don't know if I'd be willing to wait a MONTH while the clock is ticking on a warranty repair / replacement, but sometimes, you don't have much (or any) alternative...

 

Yeh, well I'll be busy with work now, and using a 128mb MX440 can handle games when overclocked