hello all. my pc is right ole buggered up, and for a £2500 machine only 1-2 yrs old im not too happy.
i have cleaned out all dust from inside i ahve performed a full system restore, but it still does it.
here is whats happening, an its getting increasingly worse




after a few seconds of a crap loking screen i loose ful control and it freezes.
please help!

Looks like your graphics card is dying to me. I had a similar problem on a brand new machine, and they replaced my card and all was fine after that. It's a frustrating issue, as the machine does not actually freeze (at least mine didn't) but you cannot see anything, so it amounts to the same thing.
If you have an older spare card, try swapping it and see if that helps.

Jamie

damn!! thats another £300 to shell out! oh well its and excuse.....
i think il wait on it ofr a litte to see it it does improve on its own. but if not. yay new card
woo, poor again
lol
thanks for yuor time

open it up and make sure all the cards, ram, and cables are properly seated.
could also be a ram fault if your graphic card shares some system memory.
look up memtest86 on google. you can make a bootable CD to test your system.
Is that corruption there on the BIOS screen?

Good luck

hey Jay-Pee

i opened her up last night and removed all dust and stuff, the gfx card was removed and given a once over but the trouble with it is its in a HUGE ass metal case inside the pc case.
ill doulble check the RAM later, take all 4 our and give em a look and a light dust again,

a note, it wonrt start up atall now without any sort of screen corruption. its not just lines, its sometimes random blocks of colour, in different places areound the screen.
and it is corrupt from boot now, EVERY time.

Any chance you got some new virus? Seems to me like something someone would crack up in his basement to piss people off.


Like the guys said, it could be your graphics card. You should have an integrated graphics card; try running your operating system off of it to see if the problem is your graphics card.

Have you installed anything lately on your computer? downloaded anything that may be at risk? Are your drivers up to date? Does your system overheat (does it have enought cooling?)

cooling has never been a problem

after leaving it for 18 hours, it looks okay at the moment, i will test it with video applications later ( nice dvd, and maybe some COD mw2 )
XD heres hoping it was just a once off

but as you can see. NO corruptions atm

Maybe it was a 24-hour virus

fraid not, it ma be a cooling problem, i had a hour or so where i want able ot run pc, then i disconnected mainf for an our and its ok now

Not sure how you built your system, but if you took an off the shelf PC from HP or the likes and changed the graphics card without updating the cooling system or power supply, you are definatly in for a suprise. Try keeping a panel open when running graphic heavy applications like MW2 and make sure it has breathing room to cool off. Just don't leave the panel open all the time, only to test it out, otherwise the accumulation of dust will break other componenets.

I hope your not running two graphic cards in parralel because that just makes the cooling issue worst

What type of set-up do you have exactly?

its been running the same set up out of the shop since i got it, although, 6 months in, both fanns HDD and the one for the soundcard videocard e.t.c became stuck on 100%, so i removed them both from th eio board and put the videocard dorected fan on the mobo, giving it a fixed rate, but i forumed it and was told that the hdd fan is a luxury and my system could live without it so currently the HDD fan has been disconnected for about a year, and i have had no ill effects, is there a multi fan control i can get to stop them blowing at 100% and still ahve a respectable cool.
also im running, a q9300 ( i think) quad core at 2.5 ghz ( a bit more i think)
nvidia 9800Gx2 1 gb card,
1tb HDD (2x500 sata)
4 g ram,
creative gamer xfi,
a ageia physx card, ( like that gets used much anymore. thanks dell. )
a 19/1 card reader,
1xcd dvd rw
1x bluray drive.
self installed sitecom Wireless device

umm, componentwise i cant think of anything else

edit, i used to run crysis on Dx9 max, and i dont see why mw2 is a problem! its not a heavy engine to run.

Quite a beast you bought yourself!

The cooling system does seem perfect, so I don't see why the graphics card would heat up. Your graphics card is more than enough for what you run. However, keep in mind one thing:

MW2 requires minimum 3 GHZ and you have a quad core @ 2.5 operating on Vista. That could be a problem if you have other programs working on your computer and may cause your system to overheat. As you may know, Vista underutilizes a lot of the components you have and is very VERY inneficient at how it distributes the work.

When does this happen BTW? after you play a game or just out of nowhere when your on facebook?

do you think stripping back to XP would halp my pc?
oops, usually whilst gaming or such. i managed to get a few hours of gaming today.
but i know if i didnt go the del route i could have paid a bit less for the pc, but then i didnt knwo too much about building, im still pretty green tho.

what would be a better upgrade if i were to get one, cpu or gpu

The better upgrade IMHO would be switching to windows 7; but beware some games arn't compatible. Try to run on vista for a little longer until windows fine tunes their new system. The computer engineers i've talked to always recomended waiting at least one year before switching to a new operating system.

Personnaly, i'd run XP> Vista any time, but im not sure how XP wil handle the quad core and the other specs. IMHO, from what i've been reeding, windows hasn't quite managed to take advantage of the advancements in hardware.

Also, don't bother too much with upgrades if you can go without them. In another 3 years your system will be obsolete. Hell, Intel released their I7 processor running quad cores over 3.5 ghz and taking as much as 24gigs of rams (keep in mind that set-up will set you back 10K, but you can see where its heading, prices for lover I7 processors dropped 15%ish since their release.)

Also, I wouldn't say you paid more going the Dell route. I know that in Canada, Dell has the best value. Its also your cheapest alternative when upgrading most of the time.

So when exactly does this screen thing happen?

if you are lucky then your motherboard comes with a piece of software permitting you to monitor the MBoard temperature and the CPU temperature while working. The same goes for the graphical card.

Checking this may exclude a few possible causes of error.

the operating system can have an influence on the CPU load but if you are so close to boiling the CPU or GPU that it makes the system unstable only by changing the OS then you have other, more serious, problems than the OS.

Considering that this is a 2500 pound computer it may be wise to stop experimenting yourself and talk to a qualified technician; Don't forget that if temperature is the cause then it has a killing effect on your entire system not only on the part that is creating the heat.

I can have the numbers wrong but it is something like the average life expectancy of a computer is divided by 2 for each 10 degrees celcuis of increased heat it operates in.

oh yes, dell and some other large volume manufacturers are indeed not expensive, at least not when you fancy keyboards of which the letters dissapear within the year, and mouses that stop functioning once the guarantee period ends, and PC's which come packed with [auto-censored]ware running in the background eating the cpu power, and publicity which pops up all the time, and "free" software trying to impose on you that you MUST buy them, and spy's forwarding your actions to I don't know who and helpdesks which are as helpful as a dead rat, and, and, and, and ...

i have a feeling that its not a cooling problem, i was running speedfan to check, and with both fans on 100% and a gpu temp of 64 degrees it still happened,

also, i think it may be a nasty virus or something, i hope not, but after seeing the cooling working at max to the same effect,

i think it is tech time.. bye bye cash.

this happend whist trying to type a reply earlier.

Okay, things are getting pretty bad. Like i said previously, could be a nasty virus.

I hope you have back-ups to your data? get that done before brining it in for repairs.

If you bought it from dell it may be another component breaking. I've heard they tend to use cheaper components to lower their costs, so perhaps its something else failing.

Good luck James and let us know what the tech said

okay i got in contact with Nvidia, and they told me to wipe ALL my video drivers and replace them with a version 2 versions old. and bingo, i ahvent had any crap for about 7 hours. im still being cautious, but it hope it sticks. also i deleted everything. absoloubley everthign with a wipe. so too late for lost data

Glad to hear things are looking better. Never would have thought the drivers would act like this. Now it has me wondering about mine as my machine has been acting strangely ever since updating them...
Jamie

well getting better is the correct term, had the trouble thismorning after a gaming session last night, took 2 boots and a startup repair to get me running tho.

Now that I am familiar with. If I run a game (lately it has been Batman), after exiting, my machine is basically hung or very slow in responding. If I shut it down at that point, I am guaranteed to fail to start up the next morning (safe mode works, but otherwise just crashes several times before working again). However, if I leave the box up for 10 minutes or so after exiting the game, it seems to return to normal, and never see any problems restarting the next day. No idea what it can be. I have checked the temp on the cpu and card, and they only go up for 34 to 37 degrees, so not a huge jump. Try leaving the machine before shutting down and see if it helps. Not a solution unfortunately, but may help...
Jamie