Monitor acting strange... Help please!

[Julken]

Ok here is the deal.
Im running an AMD X2 4200+ 2.2 Ghz PC with 2 gb Ram and a X1900XT 512 MB Radeon graphics card. Last week i moved my PC down to our summerhouse to be able to work on a school project. I had just gotten the game "Hitman : Blood Money" so i intended to try that out too. So, when i tried the game it ran fine for a while. then, suddenly my screen got filled with strange colors, and my pc locked up. I got worried, so i restarted the pc and tried again. Same thing happened, only now it happened after a couple of minutes. I have clocked my card a bit using the Catalyst control Center, and that has worked out fine in the past. I have also moved my computer around some times as i often visit LAN parties. First i thought that it might be a problem with changing the monitor, because i used a different monitor in the summerhouse than at home. So when i got home i tried it out on my old monitor, a 19" DELL CRT. first it worked out fine, but then it happened again. Screen fills with strange colors, and crash. When i tried testing directDraw in directxdiag it crashed and the VPU recover window went up and said that the graphics driver had been reset because it didnt answer to my commands, and my resolution had changed to lowesr (640 X 480)
I will appreciate all your help.
Thank you,
/Joel

[mjc]

Have you updated any drivers recently?

If so, you may want to roll back to the previous set.

With warmer weather coming on, you could also be suffering from a heat related, posibly due to OCing the card, so drop it back to stock speed and slowly work back up...I would run it for awhile at stock speed to see if the problem repeats.
And welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

[Julken]

Thanks! I ran the Directdraw test again and it works.
Also, i discovered an interesting thing. after i had reset my previous drivers my Fans started making more noise, i dont know if that is because they went faster but i suppose so. In that case the solution you provided have worked! I thank you again!

[azzey]

What exactly did you do to get it to work? This will help others should this problem arise in the future.

[ERRORMSG]

hi

First check if the capacitor of the video card is not leeking cos my friend
is having that same problem you have and i checked his card i saw 4 capacitor leeking and the effect of that leek is when plying games first the
strange color appears then the game will stop and it wont move.

2nd check the heat sink of your card and the fan if the heat sink is way to hot to touch that is an issue hehe... :)

3rd maybe your just having a Driver problem which recently i have.

i hope this will help you.... :)

[azzey]

This problem has already been resolved.
Thanks! I ran the Directdraw test again and it works.
Also, i discovered an interesting thing. after i had reset my previous drivers my Fans started making more noise, i dont know if that is because they went faster but i suppose so. In that case the solution you provided have worked! I thank you again!

[Julken]

What does a Capasitor Leek or Leak mean?

[Mini-Me]

A capacitor leak is when the capacitor physically splits itself open, and leaks the electrolyte out - usually onto your expensive motherboard or VGA card!!!
:eek:

This happened on quite a few of the older PC's(from Duron 1200's up).

The generally accepted reason for this, is that capacitor manufacturers bought a formula for electrolyte which was sub-standard/not low-ESR(effective-series-resistance) rated.

The caps in a motherboard's PSU section run at a high frequency.
"Normal" caps you can get from Radio-Shack or similar retailer are designed to be run on power with a very low ripple-frequency - around 50/60Hz or so, but motherboard PSU's can have an operating frequency of several kHz(kilo hertz), and the high-frequency breaks down the electrolyte in the cheap caps, and the cap begins to heat up. After the cap has heated up to a very hot temperature, the casing fails - usually with a loud "Pop!" sound, followed by rapid failure of the system.

I had one board bought to me, where the guy had tried to fix the caps himself, by replacing them with the Radio-Shack cheap ones - they themselves blew up in about 2 days after he fitted them!
:D
This was because he did not use low-ESR caps(which are about 4x the price of the same value cheap-o caps)

Modern motherboards don't have this problem, as the electrolyte has now been changed.

[mjc]

That doesn't take into consideration accelerated breakdown from heat build up in poorly ventilated systems (or even 'dead' spots in well ventilated systems).

[Mini-Me]

Granted.
:)

[Julken]

Can the problem i described be caused by poor cooling? Because, when the problem occurs, my GPU fan seem to make almost no noise at all. Is there a simple solution to this, or can switching GPU fan fix it?

[Mini-Me]

I could be - does the heatsink of the GPU feel hot to touch?
Warm is OK, and also warm-hot, but if it is so hot that it really feels hot, then things need to be cooled down a bit...