BleepingComputer.com: Weird Issue with my Graphics Card

I was playing a game last night when it just went haywire. The graphics starting showing green boxes and all sorts of random things. So I shut down my computer and decided to wait until today. When I booted up my computer, the post screen had like some weird vertical lines through it, same with the windows loading screen. It didn't detect my second monitor, either. When I booted up and logged in, my computer had no video driver, I thought that my video card had died. I don't know if Everest detects dead video cards, but it detected it so I'm assuming it's still there. I tried reinstalling the driver but after it finished and rebooted, I had no video driver still I have no idea if this is a virus or if my video card died. Virus scans showed nothing. Any help would be appreciated.

Specs
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
ASUS P5N-E SLI
XFX nVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS
2GB Corsair Dominator XMS2

Let me know if you need anything else.

i don't know much about the new vid cards but i would open the box to make sure it is seated properly and that the fan is working

In addition to the suggestion for reseating...

I would uninstall the old drivers (via Device Manager), then reboot and install the drivers which had previously worked or a more current version of the drivers.

I would hope that it's just driver corruption/damage.

Louis

Just a quick mention before I check if it's seated properly, there is no driver installed. After rebooting after the game messed up, there was no video driver at all. When I installed it again, and rebooted, there was still no driver.

I guess that I don't understand...how can you say that you installed a driver...yet there was no driver?

Do you mean that Device Manager indicated that there was no video driver installed? Did you see a yellow question mark in Device Manager?

Did you try the card in another system?

Louis

Um on Device Manager it has a yellow exclamation mark on it.

What I meant was I used the nVIDIA site to automatically detect what driver I needed based on my graphics card. It detected that I had a 8800 GTS but no driver installed. I downloaded the driver and installed it with a reboot following the installation. Now nVIDIA drivers usually come with a tray helper icon thing, but it wasn't in the tray. So that's kind of what I meant by after I installed it and rebooted it wasn't there.

Also, the Device Manager recommends that I uninstall and reinstall the device, according to Troubleshooting. Should I do that?

This post has been edited by AkuX: 03 February 2009 - 08:18 PM

i would uninstall the drivers again (add/remove) then uninstall device from device manager . when you reboot the card will be detected by windows and run a wizard to install. point the wizard to the downloaded files. it will be looking for .inf file. this will install the driver only and not the related software (no systray icon). if you want the software run the nvidia setup after windows is happy doing its setup.

That is DEFINETELY a driver issue, same thing happened to my IPod, the apple software died, just uninstall/reinstall and you should be golden

Ok alot of things have happened. Last night I took out my card and cleaned out the dust on my computer. I let it sit overnight and decided to try again today. After I put it back in, it still had th choppy fragmented stripes down the post and bootup screen. However, when my login screen. Was supposed to come up, it just stayed black. I tried rebooting but then it wouldn't detect my RAID configuration. After a few minutes I tried to bot it again but it wouldn't boot unless I turned the power supply switch off and then on again. Following the post screen, it said that CMOS configuration failed and that it restored things to default. It then only tried booting off my old IDE drives that's had windows installed on them. I am at a complete loss at what to do next, as I would like to avoid buying a new computer (poor college student). Any suggestions or redirections would be greatly appreciated.

This was typed out on an iPod lol.

Replace the CMOS battery...seems like it's time, IMO.

A dying CMOS battery can cause a system to do all sorts of weird things, in my limited experience.

CMOS Battery Replacement - http://www.liverepair.com/encyclopedia/art...cmosreplace.asp

Forget the instructions to write down CMOS settings...that's the way it used to be long ago. When you replace the battery, make sure that the + side is inserted exactly as it was with the old (probably up). You may have to go into the BIOS and reset the system clock and date.

Louis

sausage if its a driver issue then how come on hes post theres weird vertical lines through it lol
mabye some thing is faulty or dead
what game was it just so iknow i wont ever try it lol
when did you buy this computer
if you got some kind of warrenty use it lol

Haha it was Warcraft III.

and @ hamluis: thanks for the advice, i'll try it and get back to you.

lol

Ok...so I did quite a few things since my last update.

I replaced the CMOS battery, no problem there. but I didn't try booting until I replaced the graphics card as well. Earlier today I put in the new graphics card and tried booting. However, it only detected the OS installed on my old IDE drives, and not my RAID 0ed SATA drives. I thought this was because my BIOS got reset or something and my RAID drivers weren't updated, so I tried entering BIOS, and it just shuts down on me. I don't know what to do now . FYI, when I built this computer, I had two SATA drives in RAID 0 and after I got everything running, I put in two 160GB IDE drives from my old computer, one of which had XP installed on it. Never encountered a problem before...but it might have something to do with what's going on now.

Any help/suggestions/leads would be appreciated. I'm going to call ASUS Tech Support tomorrow to see if they can help.

FWIW: http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmen...l3=473&l4=0

a. XP will not detect a RAID unless the RAID controller drivers are installed.

b. If you have a RAID setup already and then want to install XP...it all depends on the motherboard whether you need to install RAID drivers beforehand. If the motherboard has RAID controllers as part of the setup...the is something called IDE simulation which can be used to trick XP into not requiring a separate install of the RAID drivers.

Your board has RAID controller built-in...thus you may have been able to install XP without using a floppy to install RAID drivers.

c. RAIDs will always have a separate BIOS for drives used in the setup. These drives will not necessarily appear as part of the regular motherboard BIOS.

Sooo...what BIOS are you trying to enter...and how does it "shut down" on you?

There is no problem with having either 2 IDE drives attached (you have two ports) and it doesn't matter if there is a bootable version of Windows on each or either. What matters is what is set up as boot options in the system BIOS.

If your RAID is your first boot option (it may be reflected as SCSI), then the IDE drives don't enter into the boot picture until/unless you set one of them as a bootable option.

I really can't tell you any more than that, since I have no idea what your BIOS looks like. I have an Asus M2A-VM board but I don't use the RAID.

Consult your owner's manual or go to the Asus website and download look at the manual if you have questions about your board and how to configure it or adjust it.

I see no point in calling anyone when a little reading might suffice...but that's the way I approach things.

Louis