So uh ... which piece of my comp hardware is fried?

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Vilurum

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Vilurum
So uh yeah ... out of nowhere, my computer's graphics just decided they didn't really feel like being remotely normal. Any people with better comp hardware knowledge than I, have any ideas of what exactly is wrong and how I can best go about testing it?

(I've already checked obvious software stuff like viruses and spyware, but frankly from the symptoms it looks more like hardware.)

Behold piccies! In addition to this, general graphics are kinda screwy, for example there's a polka dot background to the icons in the taskbar and in Firefox's toolbar, there's this fascinating dotted blue background to the Windows splash screen on startup ...

The weird thing is that normal-ish graphics, like non-moving solid colors, text, etc. ... all totally fine. It's mostly an issue with animated graphics, and icons. (And icons are generally fixed when they have to be redrawn by being moused over ...)

Vid card? Maybe motherboard?

pol.jpg


crazygfx.jpg


crazygfx2.jpg
 
Holy shitballs!

Your temps ok? Looks like overheating to me. Other games or similar 3D apps do the same?

Driver corruption could cause stuff like that too, you tried redownloading off the web?
 
It could be a power supply issue as well. If you've added a lot of things to your PC after buying it like a nice video card, etc, but never upgraded your power supply to a higher voltage, it can eventually burn out. I had to replace mine after a while since it got to the point that anytime my video card was active for longer than a few minutes my whole PC would lock up. Usually with power supplies you only have problems when you start pushing the threshold (ie playing a game like FFXI). Not saying it is, just something to consider.
 
Your video card is having problems.

Could be a short. Could be something just simply died. Either way something's wrong in there.

Snag a cheap replacement from a friend if you can to test and make sure it's that before you invest in a new card. Even if it's just borrowing a friends vid card for an hour to test it.

I've seen something like that happen with a bad cable too.
 
Ya..... so a key point, clean your computer at least every 3 months, my guess is dust built up in the fan on your graphics card and it broke. without the fan it overheated, fried a bit, now you're looking for a new one, about 75% positive things went down exactly like that
 
From looking at the pics at first I thought possible file corruption, but then the game wouldn't run. I would have to agree that it is your graphics card. If it were the power supply it would either shut down on itself, but I don't think power supply shortage would cause a graphical issue like that unless the power supply was just old and couldn't handle updates of drivers to make graphics sound and all that other good stuff so something just didn't power correctly. Could run a diagonostic run to find the issue if you can.
 
I could see it being the power supply, never crossed my mind. Erratic output on the rails - a somewhat common side effect of having a cheaply made PSU (shitty quailty or low count of voltage regulators) - can cause all sorts of inexplicable f_ckups. Particularly when your total draw from the PSU goes up after being static for a long, long period of time.
 
Kick it. Hard. Very hard. Kicking computers always fixes the problems.
 
Additional tests ...

Graphic problems (with icons in Firefox etc.) seem to *mostly* disappear (though I still have odd vertical bars here and there) when I go to Display, Settings, Advanced, Troubleshoot, and drag the slider to the third notch from the left (disable all directdraw and 3d applications). But of course, if so, games don't run.

DirectX Diagnostic has little vertical blue lines in its bouncing white box when in full screen mode, even if I take the aforementioned slider all the way to the left (if so, it's a really non-smoothly bouncing white box with blue lines, but the blue lines never disappear).

DirectX Diagnostic, with the aforementioned slider all the way to the right (normal), testing out Direct3D (which has me see if I can see some spinning logo) ... Direct3D 7 tests works quasi-fine (I've still got tiny little vertical lines all over the place but otherwise I see what it wants me to see). Direct3D 8 and 9 tests, I just see a blank screen, though the diagnostic apparently doesn't find anything wrong other than my saying I didn't say the spinning logo.

Uninstalled and reinstalled video card drivers and DirectX. Rebooted numerous times. Popped open the case and determined it's remarkably dust-free (very slight amount mostly on the case itself, no remotely significant amount on any fans). All physical connections on the video card (and anywhere else) seem to be well-seated.

Aside from its love of tiny vertical lines in some situations (which were all over the place when I booted in safe mode to do the video card driver reinstall; oddly enough, they *aren't* present normally), and the complete inability to do anything 3D, it doesn't seem to be running into any trouble. Prerendered videos work fine (well, bit of a frame rate loss but nothing major) with the half-disabled aforementioned slider, but get vertical line treatment when the slider's got everything turned on.
 
Could still be overheating, even if everything is clean and functioning normally. What kind of card? I know ATI's Catalyst Control Centre includes a temperature gauge, I would suspect Nvidia's whatever has the same.

Fire up POL viewer with the temperature gauge open and visible, and see what kind of temps it gets to be when the gfx glitches start happening.
 
Downloaded and installed Catalyst Control Center, and in its usual "I installed something so I'll reboot" process, ran some Smartgart tests, blue screen of death'D, and on the subsequent restart promptly disabled most of the things it could disable.

After that, nothing that required 3D acceleration would run *at all* (POL launched, no graphics problems but was slow as molasses graphically, so it was probably doing it all with software).

It also cited a zero degree temperature which I found rather unlikely. It's possible that my card, being 3 years old, can't report its temperature.

So I uninstalled CCC and uninstalled/reinstalled the graphics drivers again and am deliberating on what to attempt next.
 
These screenshots somehow look familar. It's similar to what my video card produced a few weeks before it completely died.
It didn't start out that worse, I got some weird effects, which disappeared after the PC ran for a while. In the end I couldn't even see anything in the Bios.

So my best guess is that your video card is on the verge of death. If you can borrow one, replace it to check for sure.
 
Restart your computer, boot into the BIOS (usually Delete, Esc or on of the F buttons) and change your video settings to run off your onboard video and not your GPU. If it works fine then you know its your graphics card. If thats the case take out your graphics card, find an old Microwave and proceed to nuke it.
 
get a screwdriver and open the damn box. look at the graphics card. i'ma tell you right now, the fan is broken.
 
Looks similar to what happened on my mother's computer. Turned out something wasn't working on the graphics card and we had to get a new one.
 
Just take the cartridge out and blow it
 
Blackchaoshero said:
get a screwdriver and open the damn box. look at the graphics card. i'ma tell you right now, the fan is broken.
Click to expand...

Spinning around as merrily as every other fan in there.

I *do* figure something is fried on there though, and I've decided to buy a new video card anyway. If that ends up not fixing the problem, then I'll investigate further with power supply etc. But either way I end up with a better video card than I have now, and for under $100 after rebate, so I'm not too heartbroken. :P

Thanks for all the advice, everyone.
 
Westyle said:
Just take the cartridge out and blow it
Click to expand...

First thought through my head when I saw the pics was "OMG that looks like my NES"
 
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