Help With Weird Boot Problem

Greetings Geeks -

It seems I have a problem. An odd one. Here is what transpired and my attempt at a fix:

I was playing Oblivion. Game freezes, I soon discover the computer is frozen too. No problem, this is Windows after all. I reboot. I notice all kinds of "$" floating around my initial BIOS boot screen and then rows of single pixels/green dots floating around the next BIOS screen.

As the computer continues booting, the initial Windows load bar appears, loads, hard drive spins a little, and then nothing. I reboot a few times until the computer does not hang. I figure I want to fly for a bit, and it hangs on a flight sim, same symptoms. I figure it driver/device problem, I reboot into safe mode, no problem. I reboot. Same problem. Okay . . . . I reboot in Safe mode and disable some start up stuff. Computer boots. I restart, Vista won't boot again. Strange . . . .

I am starting to think it might be a video driver problem. I reboot in Safe Mode, uninstall the video drivers, and reboot. Same thing. It seems the computer will start in Safe Mode, and a default Nvidia driver install, but then it goes dead.

I took the card out, cleaned it, checked all of my temps, not problems. The same event occurs.

So, as it is, the computer will start in safe mode with any drivers, but once I fiddle it goes dead on start up. I do see the initial Windows loading bar, which leads me to believe it might be driver problem. But the "$'s" all over the BIOS screen lead me to believe otherwise. I even disconnected the hard drives to separate the hardware from the software, same problem with the boot screens.

So, any ideas? Setup is an AMD 5600 X2, 2 megs of RAM, Asus MB, Vista fully patched, American Megatrends BIOS v2.58. I have no idea where to go from here. The BIOS screen anomaly has me scratching my head.

Thanks for any help.

 

Greetings, 20Valve.

Have you tried onboard video?

If you can get into BIOS, make changes to the shadowing, cacheing, and aperture size settings, see if your symptoms change. You might try pulling the CMOS battery for a while, even replacing it.

Those dollar signs are scary - you may be heading for a BIOS flash.

 

Thanks for the tip regarding onobard video. The onboard video works fine. I used Driver Cleaner to remove all traces of the Nvidia card and drivers, and the symptoms returned immediately. I think it might be either the card itself or the slot. I hope it is the card, as I can just order a new and better card. If it is the mobo/PCI slot, I guess I will just have to do my end of year (it has been three years!) build a little earlier than planned. The good thing is, I have new terrabyte HD in the box ready to go. I may or may not try a BIOS update. I tried the Asus Autoupdate, and that thing is all but useless for a variety of reasons. I tried to manually download the BIOS, but every time I download what I believe to be the correct BIOS file, I get a wrong version message. Utterly frustrating.

Thanks for the onboard video tip and BIOS tips (thanks sent). It looks as if I may start a BIOS topic regarding help with locating my BIOS and a video card recommendation thread.

Thanks again!

 

Glad you're up and running, and thanks for the feedback! :major