General Video Card Help
Tiax
Join Date: 2003-05-28 Member: 16802Members
Join Date: 2003-05-28 Member: 16802Members
in Tech Support
I need help with my video card. I have a GeForce 4 Ti4200 (made by Palit). My computer runs windows 2000 professional. When I start up my computer, as its booting up there are colored squares all over the place. Once it gets to starting up windows there are small blue lines (about this long ___) scattered about and the little blue bar that scrolls across the screen leaves flickering dots. Once im in windows, assuming it doesn't lock up, my desktop is peppered with little green dots (just a pixel) which move and shift as I slide windows. For instacne if I slide a normal window overtop they vanish but it creates more elsewhere.
This happened to me before only worse. Last year I had the peppered dots and my mouse would distort and be a funky color. Plus parts of my screen would scramble...almost as if you just smeared everything. At that time I tried everything including reformatting to no success. I contacted the company and they sent me a new card, which is the one I have now.
And now I have the problems mentioned in the first paragraph which leads me to believe another card has gone bad. So what I want to figure out is why. Is it a crappy company who sells defective cards? Am I just unlucky? Or is there something with my computer that destroys video cards?
My first thought is a heat problem but my video card fan runs fine and my heatsink fan runs fine. There is no case fan because it wouldn't fit due to the large CPU fan. The only other thing I can think is that because the CPU is sitting in a corner that maybe it overheats and thus, destroys the cards? For an example: Prior to moving my computer to the top of my desk (instead of underneath) and prior to having a desk fan blowing into it, if i set a half an inch book on top of the case and later picked it up (maybe 12 hours later...) it would be warm all the way through.
If it is a heat problem im not sure what else I can do to keep the computer cool...my desk fan is blowing into it which seems to keep everything cooler but if heat is the problem, it seems the harm is already done to the computer (once again).
Oh, one other thing. I was playing Halflife today and all of the graphics shifted to odd colors. I hit escape to go to the menu then resume game and it was back to normal. I have updated to the most recent Nvidia drivers, no luck. But I have not bothered with reinstalling directx....I do not think its a software problem because of the distorted colors I get when I first turn my computer on (when its doing the memory check, telling me to hit DEL to go into bios, listing the harddrives, etc)
Few other things: The card is seated properly, ive tried reseating it as well. Its an AGP card and has a little latch to ensure it stays seated. The monitor is a ViewSonic Perfect Flat A70f (with drivers installed), I suppose it could be a monitor problem but I doubt it. Onboard video is disabled but when I try to get into the Bios it has so many distorted colors its hard to see whats what. The mouse cursor occasionally has extra pixels as well.
Thoughts, comments? Have you run into this problem ever?
This happened to me before only worse. Last year I had the peppered dots and my mouse would distort and be a funky color. Plus parts of my screen would scramble...almost as if you just smeared everything. At that time I tried everything including reformatting to no success. I contacted the company and they sent me a new card, which is the one I have now.
And now I have the problems mentioned in the first paragraph which leads me to believe another card has gone bad. So what I want to figure out is why. Is it a crappy company who sells defective cards? Am I just unlucky? Or is there something with my computer that destroys video cards?
My first thought is a heat problem but my video card fan runs fine and my heatsink fan runs fine. There is no case fan because it wouldn't fit due to the large CPU fan. The only other thing I can think is that because the CPU is sitting in a corner that maybe it overheats and thus, destroys the cards? For an example: Prior to moving my computer to the top of my desk (instead of underneath) and prior to having a desk fan blowing into it, if i set a half an inch book on top of the case and later picked it up (maybe 12 hours later...) it would be warm all the way through.
If it is a heat problem im not sure what else I can do to keep the computer cool...my desk fan is blowing into it which seems to keep everything cooler but if heat is the problem, it seems the harm is already done to the computer (once again).
Oh, one other thing. I was playing Halflife today and all of the graphics shifted to odd colors. I hit escape to go to the menu then resume game and it was back to normal. I have updated to the most recent Nvidia drivers, no luck. But I have not bothered with reinstalling directx....I do not think its a software problem because of the distorted colors I get when I first turn my computer on (when its doing the memory check, telling me to hit DEL to go into bios, listing the harddrives, etc)
Few other things: The card is seated properly, ive tried reseating it as well. Its an AGP card and has a little latch to ensure it stays seated. The monitor is a ViewSonic Perfect Flat A70f (with drivers installed), I suppose it could be a monitor problem but I doubt it. Onboard video is disabled but when I try to get into the Bios it has so many distorted colors its hard to see whats what. The mouse cursor occasionally has extra pixels as well.
Thoughts, comments? Have you run into this problem ever?
Comments
If you have only the fans, and it happens only after the system has been running awhile and do not smoke in your pc room, try running it with the case off and a house fan blowing on it.
I do currently have the case opened up and a big fan blowing into it. Hence why im not so sure its heat (unless there was perma damage). I may just have to stay away from palit video cards.
Oh, and I don't smoke...nor have I split anything in my computer or anything like that.
As for fans, yep. The video card has the fan that came with it. My CPU has a large fan I bought with it. Huge orange thing thats about 3 inches tall. So big I couldn't fit the case fan
<!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Im not sure how I would be overclocking because all I did was plug the card in and install drivers....I havn't tweaked anything.
Some modern motherboards can even report temperatures. Do you happen to know what yours is?
is there some way to check heat IN windows? (win2K to be precise for me)
I know you can check via the bios, but I kinda wana know how to get that info in windows.
oh, and as for your problem, what every one else said. Though I think it probably isn't a perm damage b/c you say it often takes time for it to happen. But I dono.
My only experiance with over heating was with a mini computer (I installed the wrong CPU cooler system and nearly fried my cpu, thank god for MoBos smarter then me <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->)
Im not sure what to do about the heat short of leaving the computer opened up with a big fan blowing through it.
I'de recommend either <a href='http://www.webattack.com/get/mbm.shtml' target='_blank'>MBM</a> or <a href='http://www.webattack.com/get/mbprobe.shtml' target='_blank'>MBProbe</a>. Both are freeware and cover win2000. In both cases you will need a motherboard that supports this sort of WMI call though. I'm actually looking at writing somethign similar for my own understanding, but been too smushed at work.
Tiax:
The overheating would have come from a hardware failure. Hence it not happening until recently. Does removing the case or anything else mentioned alleviate the issue?
The fan seems to be running fine, however. I guess I just won't deal with the company anymore...im certainly not sending their RMA my card again at my cost for shipping just so they can send a broken one back. As i mentioned, this is the second card thats done basicly this.
All around crummy situation. I'm glad we got it running a bit better, but that still sucks.
Sometimes I tell windows to shutdown and it doesn't, it simply restarts. And more rarely, ill push the button and turn the computer off and it goes off....ill come back later and the computer will be on. Ive actually seen it turn itself on.
I wonder if all my problems can be related to a bad surge protector? My battery backup has been acting up...