Display corruption problem - please help!!!

[alteredNate]

Well I still don't know what it is. I've ruled out the current hard drive as a problem, and since everything else inside had no problems until the second hard drive started acting up, I'm thinking that it's a problem that has always existed but not surfaced until provoked.

Since it seems pretty stable now (I have rebooted numurous times without any problem), I'll forget about it until it acts up again. I may just be one of the unlucky few that can't mod my card. Oh well.

Thanks again for the ideas...

 

[JoshuaL]

I'm actually troubleshooting an almost identical problem on my mom's computer right now. It too is experiencing odd video corruption on cold booting, but resetting or warm rebooting clears it up if it's been on for a couple minutes. I've also experienced other random weirdness like being unable to modify certain registry settings and being unable to click the "OK" button in my disk defragmenter.

I've eliminated (by swapping in known good parts) the power supply and memory and ran a thorough scan of the system hard drive that revealed no problems. I'm down to the video card, motherboard, and CPU - none of which have been altered in any way recently. (The only thing my mom said happened of late was accidentally hitting the power switch on the power strip - turning it on and off rapidly a couple times.)

The other thing to note is the dust was insane inside the case. I vacuumed as much out as I could, but still see a bunch underneath the heatsink fan in between the heatsink metal ribs. It sounds like the video card may be the culprit from other replies, but could a bad, failing, or damaged (due to heat) CPU cause something similar to what I reported? Is the motherboard also a possible cause of display corruption? Thanks for any feedback.

 

[Andres3605]

dont u have anywhere else to try the card, like friends computer or something???

 

[alteredNate]

like someone said here, that could be caused by a seriuos overheat of the vid card. It seems like it can literally fry it.

As for me, I'm 100% positive that it's not oveaheating, and I've pretty much accepted that it's just because of the fact that I modified it. However since I wrote the OP it hasn't acted up once, warm or cold booting, so I'm not really worried much about it anymore.

I do however hate when problems like this just seem to "fix" themselves, because then you're never really sure if A) the problems was serious B) what was really causing it and C) if it's going to come back.

I'm going to do a clean install today so hopefully I'll neer ever see it again!

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: alteredNate

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: bob4432
"The first thing I did of course was mod the bios of the vid card to a X800XT-PE..."

that is the problem

yeah, clicked on the thread and I knew this was going to be part of the OP.

Can it be flashed back to work the way it was supposed to work? Otherwise you can just pretend your screen is filled with modern art I suppose.

Why did you "know" it was going to be in my original post? Is this the type of thing that only happens with modded cards? Or is there any possibility that it's because of something else?

Well, yes. I expected the exact same thing. You mod a card to do more than it's built to do, gotta expect it to fail.

 

[ribbon13]

Are you using DVI or analog? Maybe whatever chip that converts the digi signals to analog is malfunctioning.

 

[JohnAn2112]

Originally posted by: alteredNate

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: bob4432
"The first thing I did of course was mod the bios of the vid card to a X800XT-PE..."

that is the problem

yeah, clicked on the thread and I knew this was going to be part of the OP.

Can it be flashed back to work the way it was supposed to work? Otherwise you can just pretend your screen is filled with modern art I suppose.

Why did you "know" it was going to be in my original post? Is this the type of thing that only happens with modded cards? Or is there any possibility that it's because of something else?

And yes, it can be flashed back, I'm going to wait until I do a clean install after I recieve the new drive - if the problem happens after that then I'll flash it back. If it happens again, then I'll RMA the card (assuming they'll take it back...).

There's no way in hell that ATI will RMA your video card after flashing a modded BIOS on it. Good luck.

 

[alteredNate]

Nah, I've got it on DVI.

And as far as I can tell, if I clear the bios completely (by flashing a blank bios to it) and re-flash the original, how would they tell?

It's putting back on the factory cooling without a trace that worries me more than the bios. We'll see if it comes to me wanting an RMA. For now it seems to have stabilized.

 

[pelikan]

Have you run the Prime95 "blend" test? There could be memory errors that memtest86 isn't picking up. That may explain the hard drive corruption. As you are probably aware, it isn't easy for nforce3 to run 2GB of ram, the bios has to be set just right and the ram must be compatible.

Usually when you open up extra pipes on a video card and they don't work, it isn't an intermittent thing.

 

[alteredNate]

I ran the torture blend test for over 9 hours and had no errors. I was also happy to see that my cooling kept the cpu under 42 deg C !

It's true that memtest doesn't do a very good job with 2GB as you have to open 2 at the same time, and even then it doesn't get all 2GB. Of course prime95 reported only using 1800MB. So I guess it's possible that there is a problem in the untested areas of memory, but I kind of doubt it.

I agree that it doesn't seem possible that it could be an intermitant problem, however I have to say again that it started IMMEDIATELY after some serious system crashes caused by the bad hard drive. I had this thing running smoothly without 1 single hitch for 6 weeks before that (with the card modded already).

Now that I've purged the bad hard drive, re-installed everything, and have things running smoothly again, I'm not expecting to see the error anymore.

I have had experiences in the past with hardware errors that seem to dissapear when not provoked. It makes you wonder what kind of relationship these things create between themselves!

 

[Duvie]

Let me see if I get the problem...That horrible picture of the liberal hellhole known as seatlle is ruining your nice matrix effect!!! Interesting must be a virus.....I live in Portland so I know the feeling of the virus amongst the ppl here....

Joking ofcourse......

I notice the screen image in widescreen...Is it possible the resolution or lack of compatibilty for that resolution may be the issue???

 

[alteredNate]

Very funny indeed! That's the first time I've ever heard someone describe Seattle as a hellhole.

Well, The DVI specification tops out at 1920x1200, so it is pushing it, however I'm quite sure that has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's much more likeley that I've just puched the card too far. However as I keep saying, it hasn't acted up recently, so I'm just waiting for it to do it again. Believe me, I'll be writing again when it does!

And at that point I'll be crying over the fact that ATI won't take my card back!

 

[alteredNate]

hey what are you doing up so late anyway?

 

[kextyn]

Have you used an artifact tester like ATITool? Are you at default XT PE speeds on the card? If so and it happens again maybe try flashing the BIOS to the one that enables the 4 pipes but keeps it at Pro or XT speeds. I know it exists and people are using it. I didn't see if you mentioned which memory you have on the card. But if you have the GC20 you're probably better off setting the memory speed below 500 as that is its rated max.