PC Guru's - desperate help here

[Trick Pony]

Needing help from the community, in a severe way.
Been building and repairing a number of pc's over the years but this has me stumped over what is going on with MY PRIMARY PC in which I type from.

Long story short, trouble shooting another PC and thinking its a video card issue, I simply power down this machine, ground myself and remove a Radeon 9800 card. No bumping on things etc. and move this card to the next machine. Nothing. PLEASE, keep in mind this machine has every latest driver from DirectX to video, this machine has never, ever gave me one glitch) has ever been wrong on this unit, nothing.

This is what pisses me off that I am completely scratching my head on - after simply putting the card back in this primary machine I cant run ANYTHING 3D related, or OpenGL. When you start any game for example, you hear a "clunk" and the PC freezes and the activity light on the HD stays solid while the flash screen is frozen, cntrl-alt-delete wont and doesn't do anything, you need to reset.

And with all due respect before the opinion of, "what driver do you have, what verion of Directx, etc.etc" it doesn't matter. This PC has been %100 bullet proof and the ONLY THING that has changed is by removing and reinstalling the card, with always the latest drivers., since today is a simple removal of a video card. What in the hell is causing this? Any ideas guys?

BTW - my old username and posts are now gone, I guess I look like a noob here at AT but some of you may remember a guy named Tony for years....

Please, this is so important to not only me but to those that I am helping by fixing their PC needs - this one has me baffled.

And yes, I have re-set physicly the video card twice and then cleaned the pins with a soft, non abbrasive cloth on the card. And to not only blow out the AGP slot with low compressed air, still the same thing. So what in Gods name can prevent this machine from running games or OpenGL type software without locking up, from only removing a simple card?

Please help me here.......
Thank you for reading and I look forward to your responses.

 

[smthmlk]

Sounds like a nightmare though. Doesn't make much sense to me why it should be any different after reinstallation of the card.

My only guess is that by some crazy chance the card was slightly damaged in transit between the two boxes, or perhaps the heatsink came a bit loose. The stock hs/f on 9800pros are barely locked onto the pcb, and i know the hs/f on mine 'rocks' because of this. A friends got so bad that he couldn't use the card -- solution was to put on an aftermarket hs/f (which we didn't do -- i modified a spare athlon xp stock hs/f and attached it via the existing two holes on the pcb with 2 screws and threaded the heatsink), whereupon it has worked flawlessly ever since. I don't know if you have a 9800pro, though.

Good luck!

 

[Talcite]

It's quite possible that the other PC shorted out your videocard, or atleast damaged it. That's one of the risks we always run when we're troubleshooting at our store.

Anyways, I don't know what would cause the *clunk*, but the only parts that move or could make noise in your computer are: the fans, the hdds, the PSU, the optical drives. Disconnect all the unnecessary fans, the optical drive, and all the accessory HDDs. And see if the clunk still goes.

My money's on the PSU, that's what usually causes "clunks". The HDD's a good possibility too though.

 

[knght990]

You could try reloading the bios on the video card from the instructions on the card mfg's website. I installed a NIC for a client, was the 3rd one in the same office, grounded myself the whole deal, but managed to ruin the bios. I got no video and no boot tones, no POST. Would just sit there. Reloaded the bios and it was fine. The computer you moved it into could have had a problem and damged the card while it was in there. All the other advice is good.
-TL

 

[GroundedSailor]

Have you tried using another video card in your primary machine to see if that works? It is possible the card got damaged when in the machine you were troubleshooting.

 

[Bozo Galora]

to see if its a seating issue remove L-bracket (4 chrome plated cable hex nuts) and push card all the way in and try it.

Edit: I assume you didnt forget to plug in 12V molex

 

[Trick Pony]

Thank you for all your input, anyone else, PLEASE give me your opinions.


Put it this way, the "clunk" sound I hear when launching a program (and the lockup) is the same sound the pc makes when you start/shutdown.

Any more ideas folks? I am at a complete loss of explanation on this one.

 

[Trick Pony]

Originally posted by: Bozo Galora
to see if its a seating issue remove L-bracket (4 chrome plated cable hex nuts) and push card all the way in and try it.

Edit: I assume you didnt forget to plug in 12V molex

Nope, didn't forget about the molex. Gonna give this idea a try, even know looking at the AGP slot the seating looks perfectly square and flat.

And Groundsailor, have not yet done so, I kinda wanted to avoid reinstalling a card and drivers back and forth if neccessary but I think its unavoidable.

What a nightmare, thank you again everyone.

 

[Bozo Galora]

another thing is to get your magnifying glass and look over the card for burn spots, and give it the old smell test also.
Make sure FAN is spinning (dental mirror)
A big question is whether you redid thermal paste on vidcard HS.
You could run XP "dxdiag.exe" and see if it fails tests. (windows/system32)
Run Digital multi meter on yellow black pins on plugged in molex > +12V< ON CARD solder TRACES

the fact when you go to anthing 3D from 2D freezes is clearly vidcard.
Basically a vidcard prob can manifest in three ways:
BSOD soft freeze
Hard freeze to black screen
Spontaneous reboot.

This is what would happen to throngs of folks during the time nvidia had the "loop" problem during AGP 4X days. I remember getting this crap when I would try to run 3DMark 2001. The solution back then was to delete the drivers, change to 2X in bios and reload VIA chipset drivers, then nvidia GPU drivers In other words a refresh.
You could try deleting card in safe mode (and all "ghosts"), reboot to bios, set AGP 4X (NO dif in 4X and 8X!), boot to windows and redetect card, reinstall vid drivers. You could also remove chipset drivers at same time, but you gave no mobo info here.

I'd bet if you bought an el cheapo $20 AGP card at Fy's it would run 3D perfect.