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Crazy Broken Computer
YamiNoSenshi
A point called ZIn the complex planeRegistered User regular
A point called ZIn the complex planeRegistered User regular
I broke my computer, but not in a way I or anyone else has even encountered. So I'm trying to figure out what's broken, and if it can be saved or needs to be replaced.
The cause of the problem is easy. I have a homebrew Shuttle that I've had for just over a year now. It was working well until I had a brilliant idea. Host L8D at a LAN and play on the same PC. Well, it started acting crazy by the second map and when it crashed out, my screen was completely frozen up, but not the computer itself since the server was still running. After I rebooted and tried to join some people playing TF2, I couldn't get into a game. It would freeze and do the sound looping thing and display messed up textures. When I rebooted again, on the first first POST screen with the memory test, there would be a grid of white dots covering the screen. And when it got to the Windows XP logo, it would be blue dots, and the login screen (I assume) was just a crazy white and black spiral pattern. For a while if I shut it off for a while and turned it back on, everything would work fine unless I went to play a game, which would prompt it to do the freeze/sound loop/texture crap. Putting in a different video card didn't help, since that froze up while trying to get the the webpage to download drivers. I did a BIOS reset and that actually seemed to help for a little bit, letting me play games normally. But now the boot up dot grid is back with a vengeance and there seems to be little I can do about it. The last freeze up wasn't even in a game. I was trying to reinstall Steam and what it go to the "Updating Steam" bar before you even logged in, it froze up with the screen constantly flickering.
Any ideas? I'll have an entire computer's worth of new parts this evening (my fiancee's new PC), so I can try out lots of stuff.
The cause of the problem is easy. I have a homebrew Shuttle that I've had for just over a year now. It was working well until I had a brilliant idea. Host L8D at a LAN and play on the same PC. Well, it started acting crazy by the second map and when it crashed out, my screen was completely frozen up, but not the computer itself since the server was still running. After I rebooted and tried to join some people playing TF2, I couldn't get into a game. It would freeze and do the sound looping thing and display messed up textures. When I rebooted again, on the first first POST screen with the memory test, there would be a grid of white dots covering the screen. And when it got to the Windows XP logo, it would be blue dots, and the login screen (I assume) was just a crazy white and black spiral pattern. For a while if I shut it off for a while and turned it back on, everything would work fine unless I went to play a game, which would prompt it to do the freeze/sound loop/texture crap. Putting in a different video card didn't help, since that froze up while trying to get the the webpage to download drivers. I did a BIOS reset and that actually seemed to help for a little bit, letting me play games normally. But now the boot up dot grid is back with a vengeance and there seems to be little I can do about it. The last freeze up wasn't even in a game. I was trying to reinstall Steam and what it go to the "Updating Steam" bar before you even logged in, it froze up with the screen constantly flickering.
Any ideas? I'll have an entire computer's worth of new parts this evening (my fiancee's new PC), so I can try out lots of stuff.
YamiNoSenshi on
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So if you want to try the video card again, remove all traces of the old driver and then put the new card in. Hopefully you should be able to get the new drivers and install them then. Otherwise, you can try downloading the new drivers while in Safe Mode.
Second option I'd pursue is running memtest86. It's free and will check your RAM in every way possible to see if there are any problems with it. You'll need to burn the .iso to a CD so it is bootable, or write the image to a floppy disk in a similar fashion.
Good luck!
Sounds like video card, but RAM can do that too.
Did the memtest thing, since I had RAM go bad on me before and I already had the CD lying around. I didn't know about the video card thing. It's another ATI in my fiancee's PC, so I'll do the driver thing. If I put it in and don't get the white dot grid, that's probably a bad sign. Worst case is I fried something on the mobo, but I think I'd see more serious problems. I'll try that out tonight and post results, hopefully that fixes it.
I had a card where the fan stopped working one day and the PC would hard freeze after awhile (card took time to heat up) anytime I played a video game or watched a movie. I solved it for a couple of days by placing a small house fan next to the case with the side panel off until I could work out a permanent solution.
I never experienced any funky dots or graphic glitches and it always booted fine, only acted up when stress was on the card.
I'd try that new card from your girl's system, and make sure to install the proper drivers for it.
It might have been a heat issue, but it's not a heat issue now. I had the machine next to a full-blast air conditioner and it didn't help. The time it did work I didn't even have the air in the room on at all. I'm assuming the CPU intensity of trying to host combined with the graphical need of trying to play is what drove the heat up enough, since the fan still works. But it's a shuttle. It looks and acts like a toaster.
(The "hey I work now... PSYCH" part threw me off, probably because this is my first meltered video card.)