First of all, I'd like to say that after a long and completely unhelpful chat with a gateway tech, coming to this forum is a breath of fresh air. I like the attitude here.

So, let's figure this problem out.

Here's my situation and my hypotheses as to what it is.

Within the past week or so, my computer has been experiencing spontaneous freezes after a few minutes after using software that makes use of my GPU or anything graphically intensive, specifically games and once during a video. After this freeze of 20-60 seconds, the screen will usually, but not always flicker off then back on. Again, sometimes, after the flicker, the display will be messed up and displaced. It seems as if the monitor is divided into tiles and some of the tiles are in the wrong places, making the display nearly impossible to see clearly. I have not been able to get this to go away without a restart. I don't know what it is.

Here's what I think might be to blame.
Gateway has my PC equipped with a 300W power supply. It was faulty and they sent me a new one for free, another 300W, but a slightly different model. The problem did not occur before installing the new power supply, and began only a week or two afterwards. I'm thinking that the power supply is not giving the GPU enough power and sometimes it will cause a freeze up and then when it regains equilibrium the picture screws up. This is just my interpretation, and I hope somebody will be able to give me some feedback and probably figure out the real problem. I'm just guessing 300W is not enough, even though that's all Gateway would give me.

Also: if my computer isn't getting enough power, is it damaging to the parts?

I hope we can figure this out. Thanks ahead of time.


Edit: It happened again, and this time it just caused a restart after a minute long freeze/blackout. This is getting urgent. :(

Exactly what computer is this?

What does the PSU label say? What did it say on the old one?
It looks something like this:

What Model Gateway is it?

My PC info is in my profile. It's a Gateway E6500D SB.

I haven't looked for the PS sticker yet.

For my system specs (check profile) how much wattage should I have?

Computer specs: http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/E6500/1008...008488sp3.shtml

From this it's either a 300 or a 400 watt PSU.

Anyhow. Forget I said anything about the power supply for now, does anybody have any idea about what my video issue is? Would getting a 500W powersupply fix it?

What should I do?

There's no guarantee that a new PSU would fix this problem because we haven't found any symptoms that point specifically to a lack of power.

Have you tried updating your graphics drivers? Have you tried another graphics card to see if the problem is with the card? How many amps does your PSU put out?

I'm somewhat agreeing with what is being said by other posters -

this is the second PS in that system that is faulty or causing a problem?

While that is certainly possible, your descriptions of the problem also suggests that some other item may be at fault.

I agree - Swapping out that video card would be a good troubleshooting next step.

I haven't tried another card and I don't have a spare to swap out, I don't know the amperage.
I have installed newest drivers.

Anyhow, this problem happened again, but this time after the freeze I got this error message.

"The nv4_disp display driver has stopped working normally. Save your work and reboot the system to restore full display functionality. The next time you reboot the machine a dialog will be displayed givin you a chance to upload data about this failure to Microsoft."

I'll explain the situation more thoroughly. I had a powersupply that came with the system. The fan was faulty and made lots of noise so gateway shipped me a new one of the same wattage rating, but it is a slightly different model. Since that time, my computer has been having this problem, and games that used to perform extremely well are now choppy and slow.

Any better ideas?

Thanks so far.

If the nv4 display driver isn't working properly, I'd suggest downloading the latest video driver for your OS and video card from the nVidia website. Install it and it should fix those pesky error messages.

Installed drivers, no change, the problem still occurs and my graphics are still not what they used to be.

Does it have integrated Graphics chip? if it does try and take out the Nvidia card and see if it works without it

I'd suggest borrowing a card from another PC, or getting one from a store that has a good return policy (that way you can return it if it's not the problem).

I installed a new power supply and it fixed the problem.

Glad its all working again