Quick question although fixed

DXP55 · 7 Jul 2022 at 14:45

I built a backup PC around 2015 built around AMD A1 chip and board and W10 Pro - It's worked perfect till a few weeks ago when screen started to pixelate -drop to black screen or give me meassages it can't access PC.
My first thoughts were Graphics card then last night I thought this PC never gets switched on for weeks or months so wondered if battery has died.

Today I removed graphics card and changed battery and it now works fine again.

What I don't know other than putting GC back in was my fault the card or battery. Would a faulty battery give the symptoms described.

The GC came out of my main PC which I built in 2013 - so it's now 9 yrs old.

Philtor · 8 Jul 2022 at 02:14

By removing the battery, you have reset the BIOS. I would say that might have been the problem.

Rroff · 8 Jul 2022 at 03:56

Possible the display lead wasn't in properly - I was setting up a PC recently where the HDMI connector wasn't quite in 100% and it was doing similar. But generally that is failing VRAM or physical memory which might be intermittent before becoming fully faulty.

Donnie Fisher · 8 Jul 2022 at 12:15

I agree with above. Corrupted display like that to me suggests corrupted data memory in some form.

The cause of that corrupted memory could be all manner of things, one including low voltage where the bits aren’t storing correctly, which your new battery has fixed or simply it wears out (can happen).

DXP55 · 8 Jul 2022 at 16:37

Just turned it on and WOW - it's back to normal - Before I had to hit F1 or F2 which took me into Bios where I just exited without changing anything - then it let me in to home page - It does all that now without pressing anything.

So whatever it was seems to be a blessing as I wouldn't have done any fault checking - Can't see any difference between GC and built in graphics.
The chip is AM1 (I put A1 in OP).
I can't believe it's running so much better.