PC locks up but doesn't blue screen - strange graphical corruption

blun

blun

blun

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18 Oct 2002
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North West England
Hi,

My PC has recently started crashing randomly. It doesn't blue screen, but the graphics on screen become corrupt and it freezes about 1 sec later (see pic).



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I've found that if I uninstall the video card drivers (for Nvidia 8500HD), the problem goes away, but comes back as soon as I reinstall. I have tried the version of the drivers that come with windows 7, and also the latest ones from Nvidia.

This was happening on windows XP approx once per day. I was planning to upgrade to Win7, so did this thining maybe my old winXP install was past its best, however I see the problem in win7 constantly now.

Strangely, switching the theme to windows basic and turning off all the transparency effects seems to prevent the issue occuring (for now).
 
have you tried running older drivers ?

what sort of temp is the card running at, heatsink/fan assembly seem to be attached ok.
 
Certianly does appear to be the gfx card overheating. Its a fanless card with a giant heatsink so I'm not sure there's anything I can do? It has 3 80cm case fans blowing on / near it, and I've tried running with the case lid off too. It shouldn't need to be cooler than that!

Could the card just be dead? Or would it not work at all in that case?

Thanks for the advice :)
 
Not an ideal solution, but you could try underclocking the card to get more life out of it. This would also prove it was the card failing and not something else.
Is it still under warranty?
 
I replaced the graphics card with a Radeon 5450 from ocuk (£19.99!) - and it's working perfectly again now.

My ageing media centre PC will live to see another few months now hopefully.
 
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