Graphics Card Crashes System

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Deji, Dec 12, 2009.

  1. Deji

    Deji Private E-2

    Windows XP Professional SP3
    1.20 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2400+
    nVidia GeFORCE 6200 256MB (by PNY) AND nVidia Vanta
    80GB Hard Drive Capacity
    768MB RAM (3x256)


    I've been to about 8 different forums and posted this question. No one has ever come up with an answer.


    I have 3 GFX cards. 1 is completely broken and was also a 6200 (capacitors blew on it). 1 is really basic... about 16MB card or something and 1 is the one that I'm using. Which is really new. My old, completely busted card was from 'Jetway' and lasted me a nice and long time playing games and stuff. But eventually met it's seemingly brutal death when things started showing up on screen (visual randomness). I opened my case to find a card with blown capacitors.

    I checked my motherboard to make sure no damage had been caused to it. Doesn't look like there is anything wrong. The system was even running the card with it's blown capacitors until I noticed something was wrong, seemingly only with the card. Upon putting the Vanta 16MB card in and I found that things worked fine. It would boot up, recognize the card and there were no visual distortion. I'd always assumed that my card had problems anyway.


    So I went to the shop in hope to buy a card better than the one I have. But apparently, due to my system only supporting AGP graphics, the best one for my system was... The 6200. The same one I had. So, I bought it and put it in my computer. Things were okay at first. I plugged it in and installed the drivers from the CD. However, when I went to play a game, my system froze.

    However, this used to happen on my older card, too. The solution then was to install a different driver version. My card always seemed specific to a certain driver version. One that I took hours of downloading drivers to find worked. Not the newest drivers.


    However, this time... After installing the drivers, it helped... But not for long. My game froze again after seconds of walking the character. So... I immediately turned off my computer and looked at the state of my card. No blown capacitors. I turned on again.


    After some time of not playing games, my screen went blank, turned off ("no signal") and then turned on again. When it turned on again, things on the screen looked weird. I moved the mouse a bit and after a few seconds, the computer had frozen.


    And the plot grows thicker... My computer crashes in these manners a lot. Nowadays, it doesn't do the whole blank screen thing much. It just freezes or goes blank and never comes on again. No damage to the card.

    The strange thing is that uninstalling my videocard drivers allows the system to work fine! But I need drivers to play games and do basic things on my computer without it taking long. Another problem with having no drivers is, ever since updating Windows, they get reinstalled automatically upon computer reboot, even if I don't want them to.


    So, I took out my 6200. I didn't want that one getting broken, and put in the Vanta (16MB) card, which does the same thing with drivers installed. I installed the drivers for it and to stop system crashes, I turned hardware acceleration down until it was off.

    Control Panel>Display>Settings>Advanced>Troubleshoot - Turn slider to the very left


    But I really don't wanna have to do this to make my system work. And I want to run games (well, only one game, really - which is part of my "job").


    I'd say that the motherboard was broken, but nothing I can see gives signs of broken-ness. Also, if it was really broken, would hardware acceleration being off make that much of a difference?

    I also turned off Texture Acceleration in dxdiag.
    I found out that, somehow, Age of Empires II works grreat with no hardware acceleration... A classic, windowed game known as "Lemmings" does not... What the hell?!

    I am working on getting a new computer... But for now I'd like to continue my hobby of game modifying with peace of mind when it comes to my pc.



    To break things down....

    The newer the driver, the quicker the system crashes.
    No hardware acceleration = no freezing.
    GFX Card seems to not be the problem.
    Computer does not overheat in any way (I checked the temp with PCWizard before one of it's crashes... always under 50 degrees C).
     
  2. Rikky

    Rikky Wile E. Coyote - One of a kind

    Welcome to the forum,first eliminate your processor run this program which will stress test your CPU,if we are lucky your computer will lock up then you know for sure your CPU is over heating,if it can run it for 45 mins without it locking up then your CPU is fine,keep and eye on your CPU temp while the test is running and post them.

    http://www.majorgeeks.com/Toast_d867.html

    Run memtest to test your memory.

    http://www.majorgeeks.com/MemTest_d350.html

    Make sure your AGP rate is set to X8 in bios and disable fast writes in bios if you have the option,if not check for the option in your video card driver options,it depends what driver your using whether you'll see the option or not.

    If you still can't find it install Riva tuner it can be disabled in there.

    http://majorgeeks.com/Riva_Tuner_d737.html

    Riva tuner will also give you over clocking options,try under clocking the card to see if it affects the crashes,also start using a benchmark instead of a game to create the crashes then you can be sure exaclty when its crashing,set hardware acceleration back to full and leave it there for these tests.

    http://majorgeeks.com/3Dmark_d99.html

    http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246

    Follow this guide to set your computer up to write memory dumps for debugging,its important you disable auto restart,don't worry about the debugging part for now just see if we can get it to write a mini dump file,so after you have set those options run 3d mark or a game to make it crash then check -

     

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