Vista 64 4 GB RAM HDD uhh i know its a western digital 350 GB maybe? video card is an gigabyte radeon 5000 series i believe cpu is a intel dual core 3 ghz
friend is fine with setting up computers, prob is i was able to have him look at it while home over christmas (hes in military) but hes gone now, so cant have him come over and take a look. he's built numerous computers for himself and he built this one a few years ago as well as the last computer i had.
the more i think about it the more i think it might be the graphics card. i mean it makes sense, still wondering though why after installing it on the new mobo it would work perfectly fine for weeks. just odd. oh well gonna purchase a new card and see if that doesnt do the trick. thanks for the input.
My dad's laptop BlueScreen a lot, once I was using it, the screen went literally black. The whole power thing went "Boom" {I mean you couldn't turn the computer on}. So (mid- last year), we had to ask one of my church friend [IT guy]. He told us that the computer is stuffed up and we had to buy a new desktop computer, the IT guy couldn't fix it at all. Instead, IT guy had to disconnect the hard drive on the bottom and he retrieve some files. Say how old is your computer? I Hope this helps..
Download Hiren's Boot CD. Burn it to a cd. Boot to the cd. (there should be a prompt when your computer starts up to press a certain F-key to get a temporary boot menu). Run the hardware diagnostics on the CD. I can't remember which, but it won't hurt to run a few. I used this a few weeks ago to diagnose a bad hard drive. I couldn't figure out what the deal was until I ran this software. I thought that Windows was hosed, but it was the HD going south which was causing BSOD. I was able to back up all of the data and restore it to a new hard drive. Be careful with those USB to SATA/IDE adapters. I used to use those a lot and have seen them fry a few HD circuitboards.
Try running it with 2 stick of ram in dual channel if it's a 4 sticks and see what happen. That seems like a new video card. Best thing is if you have a friend you can stop by and ask if you could try out your video card on his computer and see what happen but make sure to uninstalled the video driver from his computer first and install the driver for your card. Have you try uninstalling the video driver in safe mode and try and see what happen and reinstall the driver.
nope. i was able to get into safe mode albeit still had the crappy scrambling on the screen, but could see enough to navigate around if need be. when trying the restore point, but when in safe mode it didnt read my internet connection, not sure how i would do that. not sure how to uninstall a driver....even if i did, wouldnt i then have to re download, and if i cant connect to the net in safe mode..... again, appreciate everyones input. keep em coming if you have any ideas suggestions
Do you know if your friend overclock your video card that you don't know about? In order to go into safe mode with internet access. During boot up press F8(for some motherboard) and choose Safe Mode with Network setup. To uninstall the driver either go into Programs and Features in Control Panel(Don't know remember how vista is setup) and look for an ATI/catalyst install program and uninstall it. Or you can do it under Control Panel>Device Manager>Display Adapters>ATI Radeon 5***(right click and uninstall). Another thing to try before uninstalling the driver is to install HWMonitor http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.17-64bit.zip and check the temp of the video card. Or else check in your Program setup if your friend install any overclocking software for your video card.
yea i know for sure friend wasnt overclocking. i'll try uninstalling the drivers and re installing drivers.
So i'm in safe mode right now, screen is all crappy, but when i go to look at what my display card is in windows, or the CPUID program it doesnt even list a card....
Well it might means you either don't have a driver or a proper driver for it. Try installing this http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon_vista-64.aspx is regular Windows mode if your video is actually one of the 5000 series.
you mean install it in regular windows mode? no way to do that since i cant get to windows when trying to boot regularly
tried this when i go to run the setup from the thumb drive it doesnt work, the ati catalyst installer thing pops up but once it goes to start it says "failed to load detection driver" then it exits out of program
Make sure to check that. A failing PSU is not as easy to diagnose and could cause a number of problems.
well for ****s and giggles thought i'd go ahead and switch out power supply and use the one i had laying around. just to see if it might possibly be that. well apparently i unplugged something and cant figure out whats wrong but the thing wont kick on, so i'm just gonna say F it. thought i had the cords in the right places which i prob dont. oh well, wasnt like i could do anything with the computer. EDIT: ok after fiddling around with it some more, got the new power supply up and going, had some connectors in the wrong place. well booted it up and problem still is there, so not a power supply problem. guess that all but narrows it down to a graphics card prob more than likely
Are you getting the yellow exclamation point on your video card driver in Device Manager? Like this??
Ok if you do not see the video card listed in Device Manager or the yellow question mark/exclamation mark on the video device then it's definitely the video could be the problem. But if you do have another 2 PCIe x16 slot try removing the slot that the video card is in and place it in the other slot and boot up and see what happen.
