Scots Taffer on 23/5/2010 at 23:34
Hey all,
My home PC acted a bit skittish recently with some pixel distortion and weird red dotted lines crossing the screen. I hadn't updated my Nvidia drivers in forever so I did that and all seemed well in the Universe again.
Until last night, more corruption and distortion and then POOT, no posting.
My immediate suspicion is bodgy RAM. I'm picking up two new 1Gb sticks today to give them a quick test. I actually had 2 1Gb sticks before and 1 of them died six months ago. Maybe it was a bad batch.
Any other thoughts on what it might be?
JACKofTrades on 23/5/2010 at 23:58
Permanently POOT or temporarily POOT?
Scots Taffer on 24/5/2010 at 00:07
It hasn't posted since yesterday so yeah, permanent POOT it seems.
TBE on 24/5/2010 at 02:35
Quote Posted by Scots Taffer
It hasn't posted since yesterday so yeah, permanent POOT it seems.
It's probably tired of all the POSTing you're doing ;)
Sounds like a video card problem if you were seeing artifacts and stuff.
Could be the RAM too. Run the (
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/) Memtest for a few hours. Burn it to a CD or a floppy disk. Well shit, if it won't post, then Memtest will never run.
Let us know how the new memory works.
JACKofTrades on 24/5/2010 at 10:29
Any action on the fans? Might be a power supply problem as well.
Scots Taffer on 24/5/2010 at 11:08
PSU + fans are all good.
Bizarrely I came home without the opportunity to purchase RAM and it started up without incident. I've allowed it to run for a bit so I can do some general tidying as I'm thinking of upgrading to a Win7 box and allows me to protect myself in case something shits itself when I do put in the RAM tomorrow.
ffox on 24/5/2010 at 15:56
Overheating?
Scots Taffer on 25/5/2010 at 06:39
I guess it's possible but why now? Nothing has changed.
Apparently my wife rebooted the PC today and got some error message about visual display drivers...? Not sure what it was so I can't diagnose but will be on the hunt for it in the future.
R Soul on 25/5/2010 at 14:51
Since you have the new RAM it's an easy thing to check, but it could also be that your graphics card is failing. I had a similar problem a couple of years ago and replacing the card sorted it out*. You could try disabling your card and seeing if stability returns. If not, you could go further and remove the card, using the monitor port on your motherboard.
*Except for the more powerful card hastening the demise of my weak old PSU.
Scots Taffer on 26/5/2010 at 02:07
I haven't replaced the RAM yet... the busy life of a full-time working parent :(
