Weird Display problem.

JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
edited April 2011 in Hardware
Hi guys!

When I fired up my computer this morning it posted and did everything like normal. I entered my password at the login screen, and pressed enter. That's when the weird started happening. The entire screen would either become black, red or dark blue, or it would be pixelated in different colors and patterns. It boots just fine into safe mode. So far I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling graphics driver, I've done a test on my harddrive for bad sectors using MS' own tool. I've done a good long memtest run, no errors. I've opened her up and blown away dust inside, and checked that all connections are good. I even took out the graphics card and cleaned it. I've run out of ideas as to what's causing this. The fact that nothing bad happens until I try to login to Windows makes me think it's either a driver or a setting doing this. Any ideas will be appreciated.

Specs:
-Intel i7 3.20ghz processor
-12gb OCZ Gold RAM
-XFX GTX280 1GB Graphics card with latest drivers.
-Win7 64bit.

Comments

  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    I noticed some weird artifacting with the new drivers also, but I attributed it to folding stress or something. It booting fine into safe mode means the monitor/cables are probably fine, so I agree with your assessment. Did you do the "clean" install option when installing the drivers? Did you use driversweeper to clear away the remnants of nvidia dlls?
  • JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    Yes, I did a completely clean install. Tried both the new drivers, and the drivers that came on CD when I bought the card. Still no-go.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    I don't know then coach. Most stress test applications can't run in safe mode so there isn't a way to test the card easily. I know there are bootable CDs like UBCD that have video stress tests on them. You could try getting one of those and seeing if the card is bad, but you might be heading for a reinstall, as stupid as that sounds.
  • JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    Well, it seems the fix is as weird as the problem. On a pure whim I disabled the GPU folding client using msconfig, and what do you know, it's alive! Somehow, the GPU Folder must have been the cause of this problem. It's weird though, it's been folding happily for a while, and suddenly it fucks up my entire computer..
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    Very possibly could have been related to the new drivers. The artifacts I was seeing sound very similar to yours and my GPU clients have been acting strange. I'm probably going to go back one version.
  • JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    But this problem occurred BEFORE updating the drivers. Anyways, it was either random or a stroke of luck, because when I restarted my computer just now, the problem is back!
  • JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    Well, it seems this problem is just randomly occurring now. After three tries, I managed to successfully log in to windows. Before that, the screen would just become dark and nothing happen. Could it be my graphics card going bad? And not software related as I suspected earlier.

    *UPDATE*

    After completely uninstalling graphics drivers again and uninstalling and reinstalling sound and motherboard drivers, I still can't log in properly. In 10 attempts (total reboot, then attempting to log into windows) 4 were successful. When successfully logged in, everything seems to run fine, it's idling okay, no problems. I can surf the web and watch videos on youtube and the like. However, when trying to launch a game or see a video using VLC or WMP the screen turns black with either green pixels all over, or black with blue pixels. It's not a complete black, more like a very dark blue. It is somewhat lighter around the edges of the screen. I'm thinking that either my graphics card is dying or my PSU is failing. I have a spare PSU and will try a change in the afternoon. I monitored the temp on my GPU during idle, and it's around 50 degrees celsius (122F), which I guess isn't all bad.

    And a somewhat unrelated error: after updating audio drivers, SoundMAX tells me that my headset audio plug is plugged in the wrong place and wont give me audio. It's always been plugged in the same place and has given me sound before. Simply changing some settings fixed this.
  • JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    Guess the PSU wasn't to blame. Just changed to a new one, Corsair TX850W, not even opened, and the problem is still there. Guess the GPU is dead then...
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    Sounds like that is the case.
  • JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    YaY! /me goes shopping for a new one.

    I like shopping for HW, in case you didn't guess it.
    I'm thinking a full reformat of the HD isn't likely to solve anything?
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited April 2011
    Not likely, give the testing you have already done. Hiren's has video tests built in to it that you could use to isolate the video card.
  • JokkeJokke Bergen, Norway Icrontian
    Update, late but better than never. I never ended up buying a new one, with me moving and not bringing my computer along and all. Over Christmas I was able to do some experimenting, and I decided to bake the card. baked it at 200 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes and let it rest. Has been working flawlessly for days now. Consider this case solved.
Sign In or Register to comment.