Friend having computer problems.

[ingeborgdot]

Another one of my friends called to come an look to see what was wrong with his computer. It is a home built computer built in July of 07.

Here is the problem. I went and checked it out and this is what happened. I turned it on and just played around for a while and it worked fine. It ran smoothly, had good speed and looked just fine. I started doing some more things and opened up a couple browsers. I then went and turned on media player when the browsers were on and started listening to music. The screen got a little fuzzy and all the words and pictures etc went multi colored and the machine froze. The one thing I noticed though was that the speakers had some tat tat tat tat sounds continuously coming out of the speakers. I forced shut down and and restarted and tried the same things to have the same result. I know it is not media player that caused this to happen because media player was not opened when it happened to him. He just had several tabs and apps open at the time.

Video card going bad? PSU? CPU? Memory?

These are the components of the machine.
Ultra Black Case w/450 Antec Smartpower power supply


GIGABYTE GA-M57SLI-S4 Socket AM2

NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard


2 - Seagate Barracuda ES ST3320620NS 320GB
7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive


AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Windsor 2.4GHz
Socket AM2 Processor Model ADA4600CUBOX


Rosewill RCR-FD200 All-in-one USB 2.0 Black
3.5" Card Reader with 1.44MB Floppy Drive


Logitech 967692-0403 Beige & Black USB + PS/2 RF
Wireless Ergonomics Desktop Comfort Laser Mouse Included


LITE-ON Black SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model SHD-16S1S-05


Sony NEC Optiarc 18X DVD±R DVD Burner with
12X DVD-RAM Write Black SATA Model AD-7170S-0B


CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400


XFX GeForce 8500 GT 256MB PCI Express Video Card w/DVI
It is raid 1 and one of the hdd went down a couple of months ago that I replaced for him.

 

[daveybrat]

Those symptoms sound like the video card is failing. That's why you get the funky graphics and freezing during media player or anything using the graphics card.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Power Supply?

 

[Texashiker]

Check the fan on the CPU, video card and power supply to make sure they are turning.

 

[jamesmcuk]

obviously check for the latest video driver b4 replacing it - just in case.

 

[mlc]

I would first try reinstalling the graphic/video card drivers before you do anything else...

if that fails, then try booting into safe mode . to see if the symptoms still occur.. if so, then it's probably hardware related...

Could be a simple loose connection.. so try reseating the graphics card and memory sticks..

 

[ingeborgdot]

I tried memtest for 24 hours and no errors. I put in a new psu and still the same problem. What next?

 

[mlc]

did you ready any of the posts?

just about everyone is pointing to a possible graphics card issue (heat, drivers or poor connection/power)

Since you've ruled out the psu, try pulling out the card, make sure the heatsink and fan is clean, spinning freely, they reseat the card, and try reinstalling the drivers, or maybe go to a newer version ..

did you see if the problem occurs in safe mode?

 

[ingeborgdot]

After talking to someone I removed the video card from the 16x1 video slot and placed it in the other 16x2 video slot. I worked the machine to death and nothing happens now. It seems to work fine but what am I losing with this? Why would this work and not the other slot? It may go bad after they start really using it but at this time it seems to work.

 

[mlc]

sometime the slot goes bad, or is physically damaged due to folks forcing the card in, etc..

Some boards may have a slight performance penalty with a single card setup, using slot 2 over slot 1, but it should function fine.. Check the manual