Is something giving up the ghost?

manveruppd · 4 Dec 2007 at 20:25

Was playing Rome: Total War earlier when the screen suddenly changed into a pattern of black and white vertical lines. Since the music was still playing and the HDD light was blinking a bit I thought maybe it was just the game that crashed, not the whole system, so I tried to task-switch out of the game. It didn't respond at all, so I waited a bit, and after a minute or so the screen turned black and the monitor was reporting no input.

I then pushed the reset button, and that's when the fun started: all I could see was a black screen, no POST info, no hard drive activity, nothing - BUT THE BIOS BEEP CODE WAS GIVING ME THE "BOOTING NORMALLY" single short beep!

I shut down, left it a bit, turned it back on, got the same. Shut down again, left it a bit, turned it back on, and it booted normally! At this point I wasn't sure whether it was a random fluke or if my graphics card was on its way out (surely I'd be getting the 1 short 2 long beeps on POST if the vga wasn't working?), but 10 minutes later I got a random reboot while browsing in Opera!

It's now been half an hour of normal operation and got no more freezes or reboots yet, but if anyone can help me diagnose what happened I'd be grateful.

Specs: XP-M 2500+ (@2.2), NF7-S 2.0 currently on D26 BlackMantaray, Asus Geforce 6800 with a Zalman cooler, Antec 500W PSU.

Indy500 · 4 Dec 2007 at 20:27

Might be the graphics card?

manveruppd · 4 Dec 2007 at 20:47

I thought so, but I didn't get a graphics card beep, and it just froze again 5' ago, again in the middle of just browsing the web. This time it was preceded by a couple of weird clicks. It sounded like it's one of the hard disks.

Indy500 · 4 Dec 2007 at 20:49

manveruppd said:
I thought so, but I didn't get a graphics card beep, and it just froze again 5' ago, again in the middle of just browsing the web. This time it was preceded by a couple of weird clicks. It sounded like it's one of the hard disks.

Get Seatools or a similar piece of software, and test the drives.

manveruppd · 4 Dec 2007 at 20:53

Will do, thanks! Although I have a problem with running my PC underwater!
Just kidding, I found the ones you meant

I'm assuming they work on all HDD brands, not just Seagate.

Indy500 · 4 Dec 2007 at 20:54

manveruppd said:
Will do, thanks! Although I have a problem with running my PC underwater!
Just kidding, I found the ones you meant I'm assuming they work on all HDD brands, not just Seagate.

Yes.