video crashing computer

[ebct]

I don't know if this is the right newsgroup for this question, but I'll
give it a shot.

Everytime I play a video on my computer, it ultimately scrambles the
screen and locks up or restarts the computer. It used to work fine, but
lately it behaves as above. It doesn't matter if it a video from the
hard drive, or over the internet. I have tried reloading old c drive
image files on the chance it might be OS or driver or software, but
they do the same thing and I know they didn't at the time I made the
images. Also, the machine is dual boot, and it is happening in the
other OS as well. So, my wife (who is usually right about whatever she
says, even things she knows nothing about...) days ago thought it might
be the video card, but I said no at the time because otherwise it works
just fine, but now I wonder if she is right. It is an nvidia chip, so I
tried to find some kind of diagnostic utility on the website, but could
not find one.

One other thing. Weeks ago I tried plugging into the card a Dell flat
panel that I took from another computer. I worked fine as the machine
started to boot up, but towards the end of booting up the screen became
scrambled and I had to remove it and put the old CRT monitor back on.
Did the behavior start after that, did I fry something in the board? I
can't remember, it didn't seem important at the time. And why did the
computer behave that way anyhow?

Can I please get some suggestions on how to proceed? It seems to not be
the OS, at least I don't think so. How can I test the card?

Thanks,
Irwin

 

[BigVoice]

I don't know if this is the right newsgroup for this question, but I'll
give it a shot.

Everytime I play a video on my computer, it ultimately scrambles the
screen and locks up or restarts the computer. It used to work fine, but
lately it behaves as above. It doesn't matter if it a video from the
hard drive, or over the internet. I have tried reloading old c drive
image files on the chance it might be OS or driver or software, but
they do the same thing and I know they didn't at the time I made the
images. Also, the machine is dual boot, and it is happening in the
other OS as well. So, my wife (who is usually right about whatever she
says, even things she knows nothing about...) days ago thought it might
be the video card, but I said no at the time because otherwise it works
just fine, but now I wonder if she is right. It is an nvidia chip, so I
tried to find some kind of diagnostic utility on the website, but could
not find one.

One other thing. Weeks ago I tried plugging into the card a Dell flat
panel that I took from another computer. I worked fine as the machine
started to boot up, but towards the end of booting up the screen became
scrambled and I had to remove it and put the old CRT monitor back on.
Did the behavior start after that, did I fry something in the board? I
can't remember, it didn't seem important at the time. And why did the
computer behave that way anyhow?

Can I please get some suggestions on how to proceed? It seems to not be
the OS, at least I don't think so. How can I test the card?

Thanks,
Irwin

Seems that your card is overheating. Check if the fan is running.
You may also open up the case door and see if ther is any improvement.

BigVoice

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Check the fan on the graphics card, it seems it's overheating. Maybe the
fan is going or has gone to fan heaven.

 

[Moth-man]

I don't know if this is the right newsgroup for this question, but I'll
give it a shot.

Everytime I play a video on my computer, it ultimately scrambles the
screen and locks up or restarts the computer. It used to work fine, but
lately it behaves as above. It doesn't matter if it a video from the
hard drive, or over the internet. I have tried reloading old c drive
image files on the chance it might be OS or driver or software, but
they do the same thing and I know they didn't at the time I made the
images. Also, the machine is dual boot, and it is happening in the
other OS as well. So, my wife (who is usually right about whatever she
says, even things she knows nothing about...) days ago thought it might
be the video card, but I said no at the time because otherwise it works
just fine, but now I wonder if she is right. It is an nvidia chip, so I
tried to find some kind of diagnostic utility on the website, but could
not find one.

One other thing. Weeks ago I tried plugging into the card a Dell flat
panel that I took from another computer. I worked fine as the machine
started to boot up, but towards the end of booting up the screen became
scrambled and I had to remove it and put the old CRT monitor back on.
Did the behavior start after that, did I fry something in the board? I
can't remember, it didn't seem important at the time. And why did the
computer behave that way anyhow?

Can I please get some suggestions on how to proceed? It seems to not be
the OS, at least I don't think so. How can I test the card?

Thanks,
Irwin

Have you dl'd any new nVidia drivers. I updated a driver recently and
had exactly the same problem your having. I didn't matter if the vid
was mpv, avi or any program. Any video locked up my system and caused
a system restart. Even uninstalling the driver and reloading the old
driver would not correct it. My video card is an nVidia 6600GT and it
was not overheating at the time of the crash. I had to do a full
system restore from the clone drive. I don't know any other way to fix
this. Maybe a prog like Driver Cleaner should work.
MothMan

 

[ebct]

I wondered about that, but I restored an old image of my c drive from
when I knew it worked, and it didn't help.

 

[sycochkn]

Unplug all of the cards and connectors spray with contact cleaner reassemble
the computer. Also check and see if all of the fans are working.

Bob

 

[ebct]

Well, I unplugged everything, plugged them back in, all fans working.
Also note that neither dual boot operating system would work, and
restoring a working image of OS didn't help. None of these maneuvers
made any difference.

So I put in a different video card (the original one that came with the
system years ago) and now everything is fine.

I can only deduce that the hardware was bad. I guess it is not too hard
to imagine that there is a section of the video card specific to
playing movies, and that is separate from standard display of the
desktop, and that was broken and hanging up my machine.

So all was well ... well almost. After the video was fixed, the
internet stopped working. So I assumed it was a conflict, or a card was
loose. So I took all the cards back out, moved them around, but nothing
helped. Uggghhh. I finally figured out that my network hub had frozen
up, and I rebooted the hub and everything was fine.

It happens all the time, but it never ceases to amaze me how when
working on one system a second one goes out, but you think it was still
the first and it takes so long to realize it was the second.

IMF

 

[Neil J Bundy]

Agreed.

Upgraded my brother's PC (I built it originally a year ago). Put 512MB
more memory in it. Fine. Then changed the graphics card from using
onboard to my old MSIGF4Ti4400, which it turned out had gone clunk.

Bought a Geforce 6200 (cheap but effective upgrade) for it, then noticed
there were still problems. Long and short of it was the original 256MB
memory put in last year had gone bump!

Problem was it took me best part of a week of evenings to nail the
memory problem, thought it was still a graphics glitch.....

Now running with just the new memory and new Geforce 6200. My brother's
happy anyway.



In message <[email protected]>,
(e-mail address removed) writes

[snip]

It happens all the time, but it never ceases to amaze me how when
working on one system a second one goes out, but you think it was still
the first and it takes so long to realize it was the second.

IMF

[snip]