White screen crashes

[Guest]

I have been running XP 2002 Pro for about two weeks using an Abit NF7 S motherboard and Nvidia GeForceFX 5600 Ultra graphics card.
In that time I have had two (perhaps three ) major white screen crashes with identical symptoms.

I get a white screen. The computer freezes. Control?ALt/Del does nothing but after more than once the ccomputer shuts down after a delay. It reboots automatically but with a completely mixed up graphics screen. (Varying colored vertical bars)

If I use the reset button instead of Cntr/Alt/del as above I get the same results.

I recover if completely power of the Computer then power on and start.

The recovery takes me through the boot routine indicating an earlier error and asking if I want to return to known good settings. Doing this reboots OK and at the end of the rebooting process asks me if I want to report the error. This I have done at least twice.
This error reporting procedure also says "NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra seems to be responsible for the instability"

I have been to the NVIDIA site to see if there are driver up dates and to ask questions there. There is no way to ask a question (to a human beeing) and they say they do not correspond with end customers only computer manufacturers and mother board makers.

I did find a driver download dated December 2003 but it said it was for XP/2000 (and some others)
I am running XP 2002 Pro and it did not make it clear whether or not "XP/2000 " included my set up. There was no mention of XP 2002 Pro any where there.

Should I down load and install this driver or not? What else if anything should I do to cure this instability.
FrankCJ

 

[Malke]

I have been running XP 2002 Pro for about two weeks using an Abit NF7
S motherboard and Nvidia GeForceFX 5600 Ultra graphics card.
In that time I have had two (perhaps three ) major white screen
crashes with identical symptoms.

I get a white screen. The computer freezes. Control?ALt/Del does
nothing but after more than once the ccomputer shuts down after a
delay. It reboots automatically but with a completely mixed up
graphics screen. (Varying colored vertical bars)

If I use the reset button instead of Cntr/Alt/del as above I get the
same results.

I recover if completely power of the Computer then power on and
start.

The recovery takes me through the boot routine indicating an earlier
error and asking if I want to return to known good settings. Doing
this reboots OK and at the end of the rebooting process asks me if I
want to report the error. This I have done at least twice. This error
reporting procedure also says "NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra seems to
be responsible for the instability"

I have been to the NVIDIA site to see if there are driver up dates and
to ask questions there. There is no way to ask a question (to a human
beeing) and they say they do not correspond with end customers only
computer manufacturers and mother board makers.

I did find a driver download dated December 2003 but it said it was
for XP/2000 (and some others) I am running XP 2002 Pro and it did not
make it clear whether or not "XP/2000 " included my set up. There was
no mention of XP 2002 Pro any where there.

Should I down load and install this driver or not? What else if
anything should I do to cure this instability.

FrankCJ

Hi, Frank. You have Windows XP Pro and can download and install the
latest Nvidia drivers. If updating the drivers doesn't work, you
probably have a hardware problem, quite possibly a bad graphics card.
You can swap out the card for a known-working video card or test the
questionable card in another machine. If you can't do this yourself,
then take the machine to a good local repair shop (not a BestBuy or
CompUSA type of store) for testing.

Good luck,

Malke

 

[Guest]

The problem may be either in the memory or the power supply.

If you have bad memory, it will sometimes do this. Or if your power supply is not powerful enough, you will also experience this. Try upgrading your power supply to 400W.

The video card sucks a lot of juice from that machine, so I'm guessing it may be the problem.

 

[Guest]

Part of my question was that I found drivers said to be for XP/2000 and I wondered if these were OK for XP 2002 Pro.

Also this problem has occurred twice (or three times) in two weeks of fair use. That sort of problem is dificult to verify or eliminate by swapping out components in a store or lab or workshop.

 

[Malke]

Part of my question was that I found drivers said to be for XP/2000
and I wondered if these were OK for XP 2002 Pro.

Also this problem has occurred twice (or three times) in two weeks of
fair use. That sort of problem is dificult to verify or eliminate by
swapping out components in a store or lab or workshop.

And I answered your question: you have Windows XP Pro (the "2002" is not
important), so drivers from Nvidia for XP/2k are fine. Actually this is
exactly the sort of problem you *would* troubleshoot by swapping out
parts. If you don't get the issue with a different video card in the
same machine, you know your original card is bad. If you are not doing
the exact same thing and having the white screen at that moment, then
you probably have failing hardware. Hardware errors usually happen
randomly, whereas software errors tend to occur at the same place/time
action. Of course, this is a generalization based on information
supplied by you in a Usenet posting. Of course, your RAM could be bad,
or you could have a failing monitor that is being stressed when you run
a graphically-intensive program, or you could be running a game that
doesn't play well in Windows, or... lots of different scenarios. I
would personally do quite a bit of hardware diagnostics, including
graphics burn-in testing with the questionable card and with a
known-working card, but that's just what *I* would do as a start.

Cheers,

Malke