Video Card or RAM issue?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kevin
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K

Kevin

I'm working on a friends machine running an Athlon processor, Windows XP Pro
and 512 MB of Crucial memory with an NVidia Ti4600 video card. The machine
will not boot normally, only to Safe Mode. Some, not all, desktop icons are
blacked out. Same for some taskbar icons. Mouse movement or clicking an
icon can result in blocks of black stripes that do not go away unless
another window is opened or the machine is rebooted.

There was an error message regarding the video driver from NVidia, but
Device Manager shows no problems at all. When I cracked the box and checked
the RAM I found one stick in contact with the edge of the video card. Just
enough contact to see it and feel it when removing or inserting the stick in
its slot. I removed hundreds of items of spyware, adware (Ad-Aware found
174 items!) and other malware as this system was not protected in any way
and is cable modem connected to the internet.

Does anyone have any ideas about the problems? At this point, I am leaning
toward uninstalling the video card drivers and reinstalling to see if that
is the cause. When I left the machine last night it was cycling black
screen and desktop at regularly spaced intervals. Could bad RAM be suspect
here? What about both bad RAM and a bad video driver or even failing video
card? It would seem that both failing at once would be a low probability.

Any help will be appreciated. I'm returning this evening to try a couple
more things on this machine.
 
Sounds like you have some bad driver files and not a memory problem.

Need to clean up all the nasties and uninstall any useless applications.
Make sure the PC is cleaned up and then do a Repair installation of XP.

Perform a Repair Install by following the step by step below.
Boot up from the XP Installation CD, when you see the "Welcome To Setup"
screen, you will see the options below
This portion of the Setup program prepares Microsoft
Windows XP to run on your computer:

To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.

To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.

To quit Setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.
Press Enter to start the Windows Setup.
Accept the License Agreement and Windows will search for existing Windows
installations.
Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press R to
start the repair.
Setup will copy the necessary files to the hard drive and reboot. Do not
press any key to boot from CD when the message appears. Setup will continue
as if it were doing a clean install, but your applications and settings will
remain intact.


After that run SP2 updates.
 
You might just reinstall the drivers. Remove the video adaptor from the
device manager and reboot.
 
I have the system cleaned up and free of malware. It was an epic struggle,
let me tell you! I uninstalled the video card drivers in Device Manager and
on a reboot Windows found the card and installed the software for it but the
system would not boot normally. Safe Mode is the only way the machine will
boot up. Most of the video display problems were fixed, but there is still
something totally screwed up with the card or the driver or both.

I was able to actually burn my friends critical files, family photos,
documents, emails and so on to a CD in the event the system crashed totally.
I'm a little hesitant to try a Repair or a clean install of XP at this time.
I'm not sure the machine will boot from the CD drive and to complicate
things the only Windows CD I have for the system is a Ghost image of XP Pro
on two disks, labeled that they will boot. I just don't have any confidence
the machine will actually boot from the CD (in this case a CD-RW drive).

I was hoping the video card drivers were corrupted or the card itself was
failing. That would be the simplest scenario, but of course that does not
appear to be the case. Thanks for the information, I have it printed out in
the event I have to suck it up and risk an installation of XP.
 
I just did that this evening. Windows found the card and installed the
software just fine. But . . . the system still will only boot in Safe Mode.
The video problems are better, but there is still something screwed up
royally with the video card or drivers or both. See my reply to the earlier
reply from BAR. Thanks for the help anyway!
 
I would reseat the video card and my ram.


Kevin said:
I just did that this evening. Windows found the card and installed the
software just fine. But . . . the system still will only boot in Safe Mode.
The video problems are better, but there is still something screwed up
royally with the video card or drivers or both. See my reply to the earlier
reply from BAR. Thanks for the help anyway!
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