Edgecrusher
King
Ok, So I thought I would post here, maybe someone has experienced this or knows of something I could do to test things out.
So I started to have this issue Friday with my Home computer. I am out of Ideas on what to troubleshoot, so I was wondering if anyone here is a bit more tech savey than myself.
What Happened"
Friday around 10pm (Computer was on for around 4 hours at that point), I was listening to music, and typing up some reports for work.
The screen started to "get fuzzy". Words started to blur, the icons got distored, my black & blue background started to pulse reds/purples/blues. After a few seconds of this, the computer restarted itself.
After that point, The computer either
A) Fails to load into windows, it will reboot itself after the "Welcome to windows screen"
B) Loads into windows, then after a period of time (sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 30), it will do the fuzzy screen to reboot.
C) Sometimes there is the Blue Screen of Death, other times not.
I loaded into Safe mode to see if I could troubleshoot, I did not experience the problem in Safe mode, until yesterday while trying to troubleshoot, after an hour in Safe Mode.
My original thought was it had to be a video card issue, so I ran updates, and updated the drivers, and the problem still persists. However, deactivating the drivers and running through VGA or in Safe mode seemed to eliminate the problem until last night when I experienced the issue in Safe Mode. The computer never rebooted itself in Safe Mode, I just experienced weird horizontal flashing lines, and randon pixalization on the otherwise black desktop background, at which point, I decided I had enough and went in the other room to read.
I ran a few Online Malware tests to see if it was a virus issue, and they came back clean, specifically TrendMicro Housecall.
I read online that my video card (NVidia GeForce 8400 GS) has been known to be defective (specifically in Laptops), and often overheats, NVidia claims its a configuration problem, Dell/HP Blame NVidia, I personally have a HP that I bought at Circuit City 2 years ago, and havent experienced any problems since then, and I have done more intense gaming/graphicly challanging tasks on the computer over what I was doing at the time of crash.
So I downloaded a program that monitors internal temperatures, and the video cards tempurature at time of computer crashing was 60 degrees celcius, which is apparently normal.
There was also a power surge On Thursday Night (I believe), where I was using the computer and a wind storm knocked out power in the area.
Power came back on after a minute and the computer restarted.
It happened a second time about 10 minutes later, at this point after the computer restarted itself when Power returned again, I shut the computer down and went to bed (we lost power again about 10-20 minutes after I went to bed)
Lastly, on Tuesday, my Virus Program, caught a Trojan virus on my computer in something I downloaded. I ran a full virus scan Tuesday Night into Wednesday and it came back clean, but I have been a bit paranoid about the virus since then, and then this issue happened. Havent been able to run a full virus scan since, due to the time it takes and the way teh computer is reacting.
Anyway, if anyone more tech savey than myself has an idea, by all means please share, because I am out of ideas.
The last thing I was going to test/have to test, is removing the video card and replacing it with an older video card I have, although at the moment, I cannot get to the videocard in the affected PC, because there are alot of wires/crap in the way, and didn't feel comfortable removing the items in the way.
So I started to have this issue Friday with my Home computer. I am out of Ideas on what to troubleshoot, so I was wondering if anyone here is a bit more tech savey than myself.
What Happened"
Friday around 10pm (Computer was on for around 4 hours at that point), I was listening to music, and typing up some reports for work.
The screen started to "get fuzzy". Words started to blur, the icons got distored, my black & blue background started to pulse reds/purples/blues. After a few seconds of this, the computer restarted itself.
After that point, The computer either
A) Fails to load into windows, it will reboot itself after the "Welcome to windows screen"
B) Loads into windows, then after a period of time (sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 30), it will do the fuzzy screen to reboot.
C) Sometimes there is the Blue Screen of Death, other times not.
I loaded into Safe mode to see if I could troubleshoot, I did not experience the problem in Safe mode, until yesterday while trying to troubleshoot, after an hour in Safe Mode.
My original thought was it had to be a video card issue, so I ran updates, and updated the drivers, and the problem still persists. However, deactivating the drivers and running through VGA or in Safe mode seemed to eliminate the problem until last night when I experienced the issue in Safe Mode. The computer never rebooted itself in Safe Mode, I just experienced weird horizontal flashing lines, and randon pixalization on the otherwise black desktop background, at which point, I decided I had enough and went in the other room to read.
I ran a few Online Malware tests to see if it was a virus issue, and they came back clean, specifically TrendMicro Housecall.
I read online that my video card (NVidia GeForce 8400 GS) has been known to be defective (specifically in Laptops), and often overheats, NVidia claims its a configuration problem, Dell/HP Blame NVidia, I personally have a HP that I bought at Circuit City 2 years ago, and havent experienced any problems since then, and I have done more intense gaming/graphicly challanging tasks on the computer over what I was doing at the time of crash.
So I downloaded a program that monitors internal temperatures, and the video cards tempurature at time of computer crashing was 60 degrees celcius, which is apparently normal.
There was also a power surge On Thursday Night (I believe), where I was using the computer and a wind storm knocked out power in the area.
Power came back on after a minute and the computer restarted.
It happened a second time about 10 minutes later, at this point after the computer restarted itself when Power returned again, I shut the computer down and went to bed (we lost power again about 10-20 minutes after I went to bed)
Lastly, on Tuesday, my Virus Program, caught a Trojan virus on my computer in something I downloaded. I ran a full virus scan Tuesday Night into Wednesday and it came back clean, but I have been a bit paranoid about the virus since then, and then this issue happened. Havent been able to run a full virus scan since, due to the time it takes and the way teh computer is reacting.
Anyway, if anyone more tech savey than myself has an idea, by all means please share, because I am out of ideas.
The last thing I was going to test/have to test, is removing the video card and replacing it with an older video card I have, although at the moment, I cannot get to the videocard in the affected PC, because there are alot of wires/crap in the way, and didn't feel comfortable removing the items in the way.