Video Card broken?

[maebach]

When I came back from University (for summer) I noticed that the basement computer was on. I asked my sister why it was on and she said she forgot to turn it off. it turns out the PC was on for 3 days as she forgot to turn it off. When I turn on my computer,it gets past the Windows XP boot screen and takes me to the menu where I can choose between safe mode, safe mode with networking, last configuration etc.

When I try to boot the PC normally, the screen goes blank and the PC restarts. When I start it in safemode it works perfectly and I can work everything normally. My video card is an ATI Radeon All in Wonder 9800 Pro. I think this could mean a video card problem, is there any other possibilty? The card has a fan on it so I find it difficult to believe that it over heated, but then again 3 days is alot.

All help is appreciated.

PS - Is there any recommended software I could use to test the video card?

When in safe mode, after about 20 mins it froze. I restarted the PC and it keeps freezing after loading into safe mode. Right now its frozen at the welcome page where i selected 'administrator'

[dadelor]

This sucks i had a problem like this before. But hopefully its not that serious. what you should do is turn off auto restart if its on. boot into safe mode and right-click My Computer and go to Properties, click the Advanced tab and click the settings tab under Startup and Recovery. under System Failure uncheck automatically restart if its checked hit ok and restart. this will allow you to get the bsod screen instead of an auto-restart then report back here what the error message is.

[maebach]

I opened the PC and found this:








I replaced it with my older 7500 video card and reformatted. But for some reason while installing XP the pc freezes. It cant be the video card that's causing this to happen. Could it be the memory?

[dadelor]

First try stripping down the pc to bare minimum parts needed to run, and try to run the install again and see what happens.

[accat13]

Could be memory or hardrive. Check the memory with memtest and download a utility from your hardrive manufacturer to check the drive.

[maebach]

Alright. I just installed Ubuntu Linux and it is working perfectly. Its a bit slower than XP which is bothering me. Theres a bit of lag when theres multiple apps open.

I will get rid of linux and try XP again. I just tried linux to see if theres major damage to any components but it doesnt seem that way.

EDIT: I unplugged my 2nd HDD, 2nd CD drive, Floppy drive and took out my 2nd RAM stick. Im formatting now and will post when it gets to the installing stage.

[lynx]

Looks to me as if the bearing on the video card heatsink fan has failed.

If that's the case the video card will be overheating, but should shut itself down before any serious damage occurs. The very fact that you say it hangs after 20 minutes in safe mode seems to bear that out.

The question is, what made it fail in such a dramatic way, and has the same thing or the failure itself damaged any other parts. My guess would be that if there is any other cause it's going to be the power supply. Difficult to check out, especially if it is just a failed capacitor that's causing excessive ripple on one of the 12v rails. If it is a cheap PSU you should probably just replace it.

As for the 9800 card, you need to get a replacement fan (not very likely) or a complete aftermarket cooler for the card.

Just out of curiosity, why did you re-install XP after removing the 9800 and adding the 7500. The drivers for the 9800 would have happily worked with the 7500 AFAIK. Now you have the extra problem of trying to re-install XP.

[maebach]

well, the thing is that I couldnt install the drivers because they needed .net framework 2.0 . I could not install .net framework because it needs access to windows update which does not work in safe mode.

[lynx]

That sounds like total bollocks.

Drivers can't possibly need .net

You are possibly trying to install associated software, and I suppose that might need .net but there's no reason to install that.

In any case, if you are still having to do this in safe mode you need to sort out the physical problems first. Anything else will almost certainly result in wasted effort.

[maebach]

I went to the ATI drivers site and downloaded what I thought was the drivers. Perhaps it was the catalyst control centre then.

I ran memtest and it says "Pass Complete, no errors, press ESC to exit" . Ive tried installing XP with only 1 CD drive, 1 HD, floppy drive, 1 stick of ram , video card and all PCI devices disabled. But I still only get to 'Installing Devices' then it shuts down. How come Linux worked? Maybe theres something that XP uses that linux doesnt?