Urgent: Display Problem

Mackass

Mackass

Mackass

Associate
Joined
22 Jan 2005
Posts
1,196
Location
West London
For the past couple of days, I haven't switched off my computer as I've been busy doing coursework most of the time.

Now, I got home today from college, turned my monitor on and the entire login screen had purple/green lines running across it - the windows operating system is visible behind those purple/green lines. So I log in to my user account, and the purple/green lines worsen, all the black areas of my desktop turn green - it looks like a matrix effect.

So the first thing I do, is check all connections, the monitor wires are all tightly secured, and all components inside the case are firmly connected. I then restart the computer, hoping the problem will disappear. The mobo screen loads fine, the windowx xp loading screen loads fine, but once it reaches the login page, the lines will appear. Whenever I login, the whole computer will freeze, the computer then restarts and the screen will go all black - forcing me to hit the restart button - I cannot do anything else - no blue screen appears - no errors appear - it just restarts and goes black.

I then restart and tried 'try last good config', same thing happens. I tried to switch off 'dont restart if system failure', same thing happens. I then try to login via safe mode, and there are no lines whatsoever - I am able to login to my account, and navigate around the operating system. I ran some virus/spyware checks, nothing came up.

So, the screen loads properly in safe mode, but doesn't in normal mode. Does anyone know what's wrong here? A faulty graphics card, or something to do with the system files?

Btw, this just happned out of the blue. It was working fine before I left school this morning, nobody has access to my computer, nobody has been at home, it just occured???
 
Last edited:
I can't access the internet on that computer.

It'll freeze when I login, and I cannot access the internet in safe mode for some reason. My graphics drivers are a year old though, can't be that dated are they? But how could something like this just suddenly happen just like that, because everything loads fine in safe mode.
 
Definately sounds like a graphics problem but this could be caused by heat..... have you cleaned the dust from the pc recently?....and tried startup with the side of the case off to make sure all the fans (particularly the graphics fan if your'e card has one) are spinning over.

If you have tried the above and it all looks okay it could just be that your gfx card is borked.

Another likely contender is your psu if it's on it's way out which could be giving intermittent power supply....is it a good brand?
 
Well, I've just went into safe mode and deleted my ATI drivers. Restarted in normal mode, and it worked, no green/purple lines - so the drivers were at fault. I'm going to download the latest ATI drivers now, so hopefully it should fix everything. I'll post updates later on. :)
 
Mackass said:
Well, I've just went into safe mode and deleted my ATI drivers. Restarted in normal mode, and it worked, no green/purple lines - so the drivers were at fault. I'm going to download the latest ATI drivers now, so hopefully it should fix everything. I'll post updates later on. :)
Click to expand...

Don't, 6.10's are ******, get the 6.9's instead. ;)
 
Ah too late, already done 6.10. :-/.

And now, the problem is back again, although it doesn't freeze and restart itself. Below is an image of what I'm seeing, it's a print screen btw, not a photo.

problem1zk6.jpg


Any ideas? :confused:
 
Dingo said:
Definately sounds like a graphics problem but this could be caused by heat..... have you cleaned the dust from the pc recently?....and tried startup with the side of the case off to make sure all the fans (particularly the graphics fan if your'e card has one) are spinning over.

If you have tried the above and it all looks okay it could just be that your gfx card is borked.

Another likely contender is your psu if it's on it's way out which could be giving intermittent power supply....is it a good brand?
Click to expand...

I gave my graphics card a clean just now, the graphics fan is spinning alrite, but the problem is still there. But to be honest, doubt it's heat, because it's not really been hot in my room, relatively cool I'd say.

I've got a Akasa Ultra Quiet 400W Paxpower PSU, it's been running well for a year and a half, no problems experienced.

Thing is though, with no graphics drivers, it displays perfectly, apart from a small screen resolution and mouse drag. The problems only occur with graphics drivers enabled, and the problem just happened out of the ordinary - has been running good for the past year with no problems - so the graphics card must have just decided to fail for no apparent reason. :confused:
 
Are your resolutions set high with the card (ie) settings maxed out?....if so turn them down and see if that has any effect...if not go into the bios and see if by increasing AGP aperture size to 128\256MB in your BIOS may help......if either of those don't then you may have a dying card....any way you can use another gfx card to test it out?
 
sja360, I uninstalled 6.10 and installed 6.9, made no difference I'm afraid.

daven1986, I'll try and get it on a mates machine if I can.

Dingo, I'm on the max screen resolution (1280x1024), and reducing it doesn't seem to make any difference. Btw, I can't find AGP aperture in my bios, so I can't try that option.

Think I'll have to buy another graphics card, but in the meanwhile, guess I'll have to make do with the screen like this. :(
 
I've had exactly the same problem recently, I tried everything with drivers, heat is fine etc etc. the card is broke simple as that, only had it just over a year and its out of its 1 year warranty so cant do anything about it. gutted, ive kinda got used to it so im waiting til my next loan installment before i get a cheap card.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom