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Did I brick my desktop?
Gabriel_Pitt
Stepped in itRegistered User regular
Stepped in itRegistered User regular
I have a five year old Dell desktop running Windows XP. Since I'm spending vacation with family who has a bigass TV with a VGA plug in back, I decided to bring it along with me to hook up to the TV.
First off, I forgot the tower in my car for about eight hours after arriving, so it got really, really cold. I brought it inside and let it sit overnight to warm back up. The next afternoon, I plugged it in, hooked it up to the TV and turned it on. (My graphics cards has two DVI outputs, and I have a DVI to VGA dongle I use both for my usual monitor, and to hook the computer to the TV)
Not much happened. Startup usually takes less than a minute, but it made it to the 'Windows' screen with the blue, scrolling bar, and the bar moved very slowly. It took about ten minutes to get past that to a black screen, and then another few minutes before I got a blue screen of doom, the one that says, 'windows has been shut down to prevent damage.' It identified the problem source as the file 'atidvag' which I presumed was related to my graphics card. I could get XP to successfully load in safe mode, but couldn't find any source of my difficulties (computer was still very slow to perform any task).
I tried swapping out the graphics card to see if I had fried it with a static charge or something careless like that, and although still very, very slow, XP will successfully load with the older card in.
Can anyone identify what might've happened, and if there's anyway to repair the slow system problems?
First off, I forgot the tower in my car for about eight hours after arriving, so it got really, really cold. I brought it inside and let it sit overnight to warm back up. The next afternoon, I plugged it in, hooked it up to the TV and turned it on. (My graphics cards has two DVI outputs, and I have a DVI to VGA dongle I use both for my usual monitor, and to hook the computer to the TV)
Not much happened. Startup usually takes less than a minute, but it made it to the 'Windows' screen with the blue, scrolling bar, and the bar moved very slowly. It took about ten minutes to get past that to a black screen, and then another few minutes before I got a blue screen of doom, the one that says, 'windows has been shut down to prevent damage.' It identified the problem source as the file 'atidvag' which I presumed was related to my graphics card. I could get XP to successfully load in safe mode, but couldn't find any source of my difficulties (computer was still very slow to perform any task).
I tried swapping out the graphics card to see if I had fried it with a static charge or something careless like that, and although still very, very slow, XP will successfully load with the older card in.
Can anyone identify what might've happened, and if there's anyway to repair the slow system problems?
Gabriel_Pitt on
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Is it stable in safe mode, or could you just get it through the boot process?
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Other than that, take everything apart and put it back together (reseat CPU, new paste, etc.)
So the whole cold/heat thing might just be red herring, and you've got a driver conflict with the new card.
My first step would be to scrub all the old or offbrand video drivers on your system, install the ones for the current card, and see if that improves things for you.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Download and install ccleaner found here, use this to scan and clear out your temporary files, then hit the button on the left side for "registry", and scan for issues. Fix all, don't worry about using the backup option they prompt(unless you really want to), and then scan again to make sure it's found everything.
Once that's done, restart and see how things run. Most likely, you'll need to go to either ATI or nVidia's website(what model is the card you have in there now?) and make sure you acquire the appropriate drivers for that card.
Did you physically inspect the card that you removed, by the way? No blown capacitors or anything like that?
I'll continue my efforts to fix it in the morning, dling the suggestions and trying to get them onto my desktop.
As well DELLs tend to have some diagnostics in the bios (normally just HDD and Memory, if you keep the DELL partitions then there tends to be more diagnostics options, F12 on boot usually what it is but watch the startup screen to see if it states what the key to press is.)
If you are able to actually get windows started normally with the video card in but its just running slow I would be leaning more towards software/OS than hardware itself, of course since it was "outside" and really cold that could have caused some issues. If you can save data that you need I would reload the OS and start fresh.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472
To fix it, just go to the device manager and uninstall your IDE controllers, then scan for hardware changes to reinstall them.
It would have to get *very* cold. I'd be more worried about moisture condensing on the parts, but the OP's actual problem doesn't appear to be a hardware failure. Things running slowly isn't the sort of failure breaking connections or moisture would make.
The heat sink idea is a good one.