Problem with Montior?

[Kalley Lou]

Hi,
My computer has been acting up lately. I keep getting illegal error messages and my computer shuts down alot. My computer monitor is also showing up all symbols and squares and I can't even read any icons or words at all anymore. I reformatted my hard drive and reloaded Windows 98 and Office 2000. The computer was fine for about 10 minutes and then my montior turned up all symbols and squares again and I couldn't read anything again. Is this a problem with my monitor or can someone tell me what it may be? Thank you for any help you can offer.

[rkmca]

Not sure whats causing this. Is your processor getting hot ?
Check the monitor cable, also using a toothbrush clean the pins in the monitor cable that may help if you have dirty/rusty connectors. Open your computer and try wiggling the video card little bit or take it out and put it back on again.
Hope this helps.

------------------
RM

[Paleo Pete]

Also could be a boot sector virus, which can be transferred from one install to another, or by floppy, run a good virus scanner with current DAT files.

Corrupt system files can also cause the "heiroglyphics".

------------------
If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[BigBlue66]

Hi Kalley Lou,

If the above replies don't get you anywhere, the next thing to check is your video board. How old is your system? How old is your monitor?

I recently had the same thing happen to my system. I replaced the video board and shortly thereafter, I replaced the monitor. So I don't really know which fix helped the most, but I have an idea that it was the video board. Paleo Pete thought so, too.

How much memory does your current video board have? Have you recently added graphics intensive software, such as desktop publishing? Does your monitor get hot or make odd popping sounds?

I would be almost willing to bet that if you have added graphics intensive software lately, that your video card needs to be replaced/upgraded. I was getting the same "illegal operation" error messages until I replaced mine. If your monitor appears to be OK except for the occasional garbage on the screen, that is, it doesn't get excessively hot or make any weird noises, then ifn I were you, I would replace the video board. You can usually pick those up at reasonable prices.

Good Luck.

Big Blue 66

[ReddDogg]

My experience has been that either an overheating processor or bad ram chips cause this sort of activitiy. THe other suggestions might be correct too, but the first and only things I have ever had to check are cpu overheat, and ram chip being bad. Other suggestions are logical though.

------------------
Joe Redd
MCP

[xor_chad]

I have tested literally hundreds of video cards and other hardware. When it IS indeed the video card that was bad there were several common symptoms.
1)no video at ALL but the system doesnt warn that no video is present.
2)it works just fine drawing text, like before the Windows GUI loads, and then goes crazy on the real graphics. Crazy being like looking at an untuned TV station or just throwing in random characters in odd places.
3)They work fine UNTILL you load the proper drivers. Ive seen them work just fine as Generic VGA but soon as you load the drivers they crap out.
4)After getting hot they again do crazy things and/or cause system failue related problems. ie auto reboot, blue screens and hang ups.

Consequenty overheating is easy to determine since you can reach in and feel the card. if something is REALLY REALLY hot, its overheating. But dont assume just cause its warm-to-hot its overheating. Modern video cards run hot generally.

The easiest thing to do right now would be swap video cards out.
Also Make sure your fans are still working. Sometimes those things give out and you get all knids of heat problems.

Its definately not the monitor tho, if it were the monitor it would be more like a scrambled TV station. A monotor will not decide to draw a character instead of a box, it just does what the video card tells it to do. A virus would not cause illegal operations either. I put my money on bad card or hot card. Hope this helps...

PS
Go somewhere that has a good return policy and buy a new video card. If this doesnt fix the problem return the card and check the RAM and CPU.

[This message has been edited by xor_chad (edited 11-25-2000).]

[This message has been edited by xor_chad (edited 11-25-2000).]