Graphical Problems

[Edgecrusher]

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.

 

[Edgecrusher]

One last thing.

I downloaded a graphical benchmark test (Fur something?).
and during the test, at roughly 92-93% complete, it caused the computer to BSOD/reboot.

 

[Cutlass]

First thing to check is if the cooling is working. You have some temps, and that's good. I'd still open the box and check that the fans are running properly and the heatsinks and fans are clear of dust. If you find it clean, or clean it and the problem persists, it could be a hardware failure. Possibly related to that power problem you mentioned. If that's true, then you are going to have to replace components until the problem is fixed. You could send it out to a repair shop if you can't handle that, but that gets expensive fast.

 

[GenMarshall]

I have a hunch that the video card would need replacing. Though for the time being, I would set aside money for a new video card if the day ever comes that you have to replace the video card.

This happened with my older dell laptop (I wont touch another dell after that misshap) when a third party techs I sent it to had it cleaned out and removed the "bugs", the problem persisted when I installed and played a 3D game, had a Dell Tech support put in a new video card, the video card did not last for about a minute before it gotten burnt, sent it to the third party techs and Dell REFUSED to let the third party techies to open and take apart the laptop to find out why the laptop kept eating video cards. After that, I no longer WANT to touch another dell as a personal computer.

 

[Fëanor]

What is crashing according the BSOD?

 

[Edgecrusher]

What is crashing according the BSOD?

BSOD only appear twice, and flashed too fast before I could copy down the code.
I have since deactivated automatic rebooting and have been waiting for the BSOD of to appear. Almost all of the time, when it does crash, as I mentioned the screen gets horizontal lines, fuzzy icons and words, and the background/colors begin to pulse various shades (Blues pulse red/purple). The Screen shakes a bit then goes black. The Monitor displays the "going to sleep" message, then the computer reboots.

It happens fairly consistantly when Windows is loaded normally, either after it loads to the desktop, or during the "welcome" screen.

What has begin to worry me is the fact that horizontal lines/pixalization has started to appear in Safe Mode. However the computer has never rebooted itself while in Safe Mode.

I am convinced (hoping) it is simply a Video Card issue, as mentioned/suggested, and not some kind of motherboard issue. Ive been holding out that it is a driver conflict between the NVidia card, and the CPU or something to that effect.

I havent had time since Sunday to really play around with it, and test things out.

One thing I did do was in Safe mode on Monday, look in McAfee and find the Trojan that had been identified. I found a Removal tool online as well as find out the symptems of the Virus. The tool ran and did not find anything, in addiion the symptems didn't match what has been happening, so I believe that can be ruled out.

 

[Cutlass]

It sounds as if the video card is all but dead. Can you get another one and try it instead?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Doesnt sound like a driver conflict. That kind of heavy artifacting is indicative of a hard failure.

 

[Quintillus]

Sounds like the video card going bad to me, too. It may have been caused by the power surges, but I'd put my money on the 8400 GS defect - it doesn't manifest itself as often in desktops due to their different thermal profile, but the flaw that affects the laptop versions is still in the desktop architecture. If you still have warranty on this, HP should cover it. If not, you'll probably want to use the old video card until you can get a new one (and I wouldn't advise replacing it with another GeForce 8, or you may find yourself in a similar situation in a couple years).

One thing you can do until another BSOD occurs is run Microsoft's uptime utility, available here on support.microsoft.com. Assuming no command-line experience, you'll want to save the file (make sure you choose the Intel (x86) version) to C:\Windows. If it asks if you want to overwrite the file, then that means you already have the utility (and you probably have XP Pro/Vista Business); don't overwrite. Then start a command prompt, by going to Start-> Run (or Windows key + R) and typing "cmd" (without quotes), then enter. At the prompt, type "uptime /s" without quotes, and hit enter. You may have to scroll up a bit, but you'll see a log-style list of major system events shortly after the "uptime /s" you entered. Key among these for you is the Bluescreens. To the right of each Bluescreen event, you'll see the error code. You can use these to look up the errors on Google, and chances are, it will indicate some sort of error with the video card.

An example line you'll be looking for:

 01/30/2010  9:37:37 PM  Bluescreen                     STOP 0x100000ea

This seems to work in both Windows XP and Windows 7, and should in Vista, as well. In Windows 7 I got funky results for the timezone in uptime, but the logging worked fine. The only problem I foresee if if you are running Vista or Windows 7 and have User Account Control enabled. In such a case you cannot directly save to C:\Windows with IE (and probably cannot with another browser, either). Thus you'd have to save it to My Documents, and manually copy or move it over to C:\Windows in Windows Explorer, or disable User Account Control before starting (if you're more familiar with the command line, you could also run it from any other location on the computer).

In any event, if you don't already have a surge protector, I'd suggest getting one. For the amount of equipment they can save, they aren't very expensive.

 

[Edgecrusher]

Thanks for the advice, A friend is going to loan me an older video card to swap out until I can get a new one and to confirm its a video card issue.

To Update:
There was a driver update available for the 8400 through Windows Update, which I installed. This resulted in the shades of colors on the desktop to become alot brighter. For example the red bar her at CFF became a very bright Red, vs. a Dark Red/Maroon that it is at my work computer and before the update.
It was mildly fixed by adjusting the contrast/brightness.

For the time being I havent experienced any of the color pulsing/lines/blurriness that I experienced before, however when opening up Civ or running a graphical benchmark test, it results in the monitor to go black, then flash the "going to sleep" message.
Though The computer hasnt been on for very long, so that might have been why it hadn't replicated the issues yet.

Lastly, the tempurature though all this has hovered between 60 and 65 celsius.

But agian, thanks for everyones help and advice, when I get it fixed (i.e. with a new video card) I will post what happens.

One thing you can do until another BSOD occurs is run Microsoft's uptime utility, available here on support.microsoft.com. Assuming no command-line experience, you'll want to save the file (make sure you choose the Intel (x86) version) to C:\Windows. If it asks if you want to overwrite the file, then that means you already have the utility (and you probably have XP Pro/Vista Business); don't overwrite. Then start a command prompt, by going to Start-> Run (or Windows key + R) and typing "cmd" (without quotes), then enter. At the prompt, type "uptime /s" without quotes, and hit enter. You may have to scroll up a bit, but you'll see a log-style list of major system events shortly after the "uptime /s" you entered. Key among these for you is the Bluescreens. To the right of each Bluescreen event, you'll see the error code. You can use these to look up the errors on Google, and chances are, it will indicate some sort of error with the video card.

An example line you'll be looking for:

 01/30/2010  9:37:37 PM  Bluescreen                     STOP 0x100000ea

This seems to work in both Windows XP and Windows 7, and should in Vista, as well. In Windows 7 I got funky results for the timezone in uptime, but the logging worked fine. The only problem I foresee if if you are running Vista or Windows 7 and have User Account Control enabled. In such a case you cannot directly save to C:\Windows with IE (and probably cannot with another browser, either). Thus you'd have to save it to My Documents, and manually copy or move it over to C:\Windows in Windows Explorer, or disable User Account Control before starting (if you're more familiar with the command line, you could also run it from any other location on the computer).

In any event, if you don't already have a surge protector, I'd suggest getting one. For the amount of equipment they can save, they aren't very expensive.

I will do that as well to see what the error was.