Bizarre problem with Geforce 260GTX

[kungfuafrican]

Hopefully someone can help me here. I have a MSI Geforce N260GTX that I've had for about a year. I took it out of my machine the other day in order to remove a hard drive, and after replacing, I now receive the "Video driver has stopped responding and has recovered successfully" error whenever the 3D hardware is accessed. What I mean is, if I turn aero and glass off in win7, everything is ok. But can't run games, or anything that uses 3D.

This is not a driver issue, as it happens in mac osx on the same motherboard, as well as in my other computers. I must have done something to the card somehow either when I removed it or reinstalled it.

I thought maybe the card bent, and the heatsink came away from the gpu, so I removed the heatsink, applied arctic silver 5 (which lowered temps btw), but didn't stop the crashing when 3D hardware is accessed. I visually inspected the card and see no scratches or other damage.

The only thing I notice is a specific piece of hardware, labelled "APL1117". It's a small regulator on the underside of the card, approx. 1/4" wide with 3 terminals. Two terminals are soldered, but the middle terminal extends about 1mm out of the regulator but doesn't connect to anything. I can't tell if it is supposed look like that, or if it maybe broke off. There is a small pool of solder underneath, so it makes me think maybe it once connected there but snapped off during the removal/install.

I can't find any hi-res photos of the underside of a 260gtx, so I'm wondering if anyone else has the same or similar card, and can check to see if their's has a APL1117 regulator with two connected terminals and one non-connected in the middle. I can't take a photo, but the regulator is a black 1/4 inch rectangle on the underside of the card, approx. 1" from where the pcie power connectors are mounted.

I would buy a different card, but this specific one happens to be extremely compatible with osx and is hard to find for sale anymore. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[CurseTheSky]

It sounds like whatever component that was got knocked loose. So, good detective work so far.

It's not for the faint of heart, but you can try your hand at resoldering it (hopefully) without damaging the rest of the card. You would heat up the little solder puddle where the lead used to attach to, then bend the component gently down to reattach the lead. You could end up damaging the card worse than it already is, though.

I definitely agree with getting some pictures of other peoples' cards before doing anything, though. Thankfully it was a very popular card. Perhaps you can post a few pictures of yours (zoomed out, then zoomed in) marking exactly where the component is. Even a crappy cell phone picture would save someone the aggravation of locating where the component is.