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Well, this is a weird one... I bet it'll stump you too!

A

aweigh

Member
Ok, I'll get right to it:

A few weeks ago my computer started hard-locking and blue-screening. The particular blue-screen it gave me said it was a PFN_PAGE_FILE error, so I thought it was a failing hard-drive. I tried re-installing XP but it gave me weird disc-read errors during the installation, or missing files, regardless of the condition of the CD. Eventually I replaced the hard-drive, and re-installed XP, and everything went smoothly for a while.

Soon enough it started hard-locking and blue-screening again, except this time with the wonderful addition of artifacts (in-game and desktop) and repeating that wonderful PFN_PAGE_FILE error in the BSOD.

I started panicking, and borrowed a stick of RAM from a friend and popped it in... I reformatted and re-installed XP, and managed to get into my desktop, although as soon as I installed my ForceWare drivers I got slight artifacts on my desktop. If I uninstalled the drivers, the artifacts would go away, and video output would be perfect. I went and bought a $13 PSU Tester from CompUSA, but it says my PSU is working properly (480w, generic cheapo brand), although I seriously doubt how accurate that thing is, considering it cost $13 bucks.

Recently, as in yesterday/today, I can't get a working desktop because it won't load XP (since the last time I shut it down it had the video driver installed). However, instead of loading the desktop with artifacts like before, it simply refuses to load any image whatsoever, without any message or anything at all. I can boot up the BIOS without problems or artifacts, and I can initiate an XP installation, but it constantly spews disc-read and missing-files errors regardless of the installation CD used.

So to sum it up: It's not the hard-drive, because I'm using a different one. It's not the RAM either, because as I said, I've used different sticks, so it all boils down to this... it's either:

1. The video card is damaged and/or its video ram is corrupted, although it seems unlikely because it works wonderfully if I don't install a driver (before it stopped showing an image), and most importantly, it worked fine in a friend's computer.

2. My motherboard is crapping out. It's about 6 months old and it's always been glitchy, and won't let me run 3 sticks of RAM at once. It's an EPOX 8K series, nForce 3 250, worth about $60.

3. It could still be my PSU, since I don't trust the power tester apparatus from CompUSA.

Points in favor of it being the video card: The heavy artifacting, which would sometimes also randomly affect the whole screen as soon as boot-up started, and a few BSOD's which cited "NV"in their description of the misbehaving file.

Points against it being the video card: It works fine in a friend's comp, it's a 6800GT and it could be getting weak output from my cheap-o PSU, the artifacts go away and it works perfectly on my comp if I don't install the video driver, and also... I bought it from a friend who moved away recently and the chances of RMA-ing a year and a half-old card are slim. I think he bought it from MonarchComputers. Also, I must mention that when the artifacts affected the whole screen as soon as I booted up the computer, I could get them to go away by switching around the molex connectors.

Points in favor of it being the motherboard: As I said, I already ruled out the HDD and the RAM, and the testing apparatus from CompUSA says my PSU is fine (although as I said, I don't trust it), so that pretty much leaves only the 6 month old EPOX 8K nForce 3 250 board. It would explain the constant IDE-related errors (my HDD's have all been IDE), the read errors related to XP installation and a failing AGP port, or overall inability to transmit proper output from the PSU.

Points in favor of it being the PSU: It would be the cheapest/easist thing to replace. 🙂

PLEASE, fellow forum members and assorted experts, throw in your two cents!
 
PSU, that would be my first bet. Go grab a good PSU and see what happens. I would run memtest on the RAM to be sure it's not that.
 
Do you see any improvement if you boot the machine with minimal devices attached? Also, have you run Memtest on the RAM - I know you borrowed a stick from a friend and was able to reinstall but it would be interesting to know

EDIT: The penguin beat me to it, I would also guess at a faulty PSU in the long run
 
my money's on the board. For some reason, that's happened with like 3 epox boards for me and some friends, but other epox boards we've had have worked flawlessly for years. To make sure, try a good PSU (maybe your friend's, since it worked in his machine), and other than that, it's probably the board. The other thing is, if you find out it is the board, the one thing I've discovered about epox is that the first thing you should do when you get your board, is get a BIOS update. they usually ship with version 1 bios or something - usually very buggy, and cause problems like IDE controller failure.
 
Check the capacitors on the motherboard. If any of them are domed on the top or have any signs of leakage, they've failed and will make your system unstable.
 
try upping the voltage on the ram. when i first got my computer i was getting all kinds of BSOD's like no tomorrow and all i did was raise the voltage from about 2.6v to 2.7 or 2.8 (i forget which one) and i havent had ANY bsod's since then
 
Thanks for the advice people. Later tonight I'll go grab a friend's PSU and try that, and I'll also give memtest a shot. I gotta download it and burn it from a friend's comp, so that's why I haven't done it yet, although as I said, the problems persisted even with the other RAM stick.

NOTE: The RAM voltages don't affect anything. This EPOX board, as I said before, has always been glitchy and from the start I had to manually set the RAM voltages since the AUTO option would under-juice them. I've always had ém at 2.8, the board's maximum.
 
It sounds like either motherboard or PSU is slowly damaging your hard drive. It's kind of hard to diagnose problems that occurs over long-time. Since your board was glitchy from beginning, it could likely be the drive controller on the board is slowly killing the drive. PSU is kinda hard to check for long-term problems. If it's cheapo brand, I would swap it to a more known brand for safe measure.
 
Have you tried resetting the CMOS via the motherboard jumper (being very careful to closely follow the motherboard's manual directions exactly) ???

Before I did the above, I would go to the motherboards website and download and have the latest version of the BIOS ready to install after I had reset the CMOS via jumper. After I reset the CMOS as above I would initially boot the system to a bootable WIN98 floppy disk and FDISK and REFORMAT the hard drive. Make sure you save anything you need from the drive first.

After you flash the BIOS to the latest version, make sure you carefully study all of the BIOS setting per the motherboard manuals instructions and get them ALL set correctly before you reinstall your operating system.

P. S. - After you have done the above and if you still have problems, you can be pretty much assured that you have some type of hardware problem.

Good luck.
 
Originally posted by: AsianriceX
Check the capacitors on the motherboard. If any of them are domed on the top or have any signs of leakage, they've failed and will make your system unstable.
Click to expand...

Yeah, check the capacitors.... I had the same thing happen to me, and when I opened it up a bunch of the capacitors had the domes appearance and a bunch of the electrolytic gel (I think that's what it's called) was comming out of the tops. It was an Epox board too.
 
Ok, well I tried out a friend's PSU, a pricey Rosewill 450w with bling-bling lights and sleeved cables, and I booted up fine and re-formatted / re-installed XP... I got into my desktop perfectly, but as soon as I installed the motherboard drivers It rebooted and I lost my display image, as before. The BIOS and XP's installation process display perfectly, as did my desktop sans drivers, but as SOON as a I initiated any kind of driver installation it rebooted and I lost my image output when starting Windows. So... it's gotta be the motherboard. Oh, and I've tried many, many times resetting the CMOS and going with "Factory Default" and/or "Optimized" settings from the menu, that's never made any difference. As I said before, although the lack of an image thing might point to the video card, I'm pretty sure It's ruled out because I tried it out AGAIN in another friend's computer last night, the one I borrowed the PSU from, and it worked perfectly there too. So basically the ony possible culprit left is the board, and I'm going right now to buy a new one. Thanks for th advice everyone, I'll be sure to post what happens next.

PS: As for the capacitors, although I haven't noticed anything leaking down there I'm not exactly certain I would notice if anything was "domed" or not, since I don't know what exactly to look for. I'll just say it pretty much looks the same it's always looked.
 
I vote for bad mobo. It's just the fact that the real problems pop up whenever trying to access a device in any way other than just being labeled a device. In my experience, most real strange random problems are usually the mobo. My first computer had a bad mobo, and I was stuck in DOS for 3 years since windows 95 never worked right (not to mention I'd stick with DOS before win3.1).
 
You still may want to look at you BIOS setting, particularily the ones related to BUS speed and clock multipliers.

The reason I say this is because I have an MSI system which has the exact same problem that you are describing in that I can install the O/S and everything works fine until I start installing video drivers, etc.

What I found out is that even though my motherboard is SUPPOSED to run at 133mhz (older motherboard) it will only function correctly if I leave it at 100mhz and leave all of the BUS & CPU related settings at defaults. As soon as I try to switch it to 133 and restart and/or do a cold boot, I am fine until I get to the desktop, at which point I get NO video.

You might try setting all of these parameters to the lowest possible speed settings.

But might be time to buy another board.

Good luck.
 
1st vote is for the PSU
2nd vote is for a bad mobo ( had 2 mobo's go belly up from bad caps )
makes you think all kinds of stuff is going bad -- ram , cpu , video , Hdd's ,PSU



check boomerangs link for pics of bad caps
 
Ok guys, quick update cuz i gotta go... I bought a new mobo, an Asrock s754, and while one bad thing happened it's going smoothly right now. The first time I booted up into the BIOS, the screen scrambled and artifacted like before, but I turned off the comp and rebooted, and it went away. I re-installed XP and I'm in the desktop right now, but I'm afraid it'll lock-up / artifact when I install the drivers like It used to do before... anyway, my friend tells me if it happens again it's probably due to my bad monitor connector, which broke off one of its pins (it's now 14-pin, heh). He says it could probably be the cause of the screen corrupting / artifacting, while the actual comp doesn't lock-up. Thanks for the screens to the bad capacitors, I'll look 'em over once I have a minute. By the way, this new mobo rocks, it's micro-ATX and the layout is really nice. Much better than the EPOX.
 
Ok, everything is still the same with the new mobo. I can get to a desktop with no problems, and even install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers that come with the new mobo, but as soon as I install the video drivers I lose my display. My friend insists it's because of the missing pin on the HDMI connector of my monitor, which unfortunately, does not feature a removable HDMI. I'm gonna go borrow a friend's monitor tomorrow and test that out. I refuse to accept it's the video card cuz it works fine in two other computers, but... :/

PS: By the by, I tried all sorts of different frecquency settings, everything from setting my RAM to 133mhz and underclocking my CPU to under/over-clocking different voltages (I do know how to overclock so don't worry, I didn't fry anything).
 
Was going to say CPU after seeing that you replaced everything else, but seeing that your monitor has a broken pin, im going for that now. Though its somewhat uncommon to see such a thing, its very possible the missing pin could be causing a short that is disrupting the video card at the electrical level, thus causing the problems. Definently try your friends monitor out.
 
i was going to say mobo but now I say monitor. Though that doesn't explain why you'd get a BSOD because of video drivers, I say that was related to the mobo.
 
Ugh... well, I plugged in the other monitor and it booted up with a scrambled BIOS. The display works fine if I switch it over to the integrated video though. I reformatted/reinstalled XP and managed to install all of the MoBo drivers and the integrated video driver without any errors, lock-ups or loss of display. So basically, it looks like it was the video card after all, which makes no freaking sense! I'm gonna run Memtest86 tomorrow, and also give another try to plugging the monitor into the 6800GT. If it really is the video card, which is the only component left which I haven't exchanged for another for testing purposes, then it's time to check those RMA policies...

MOTE: I'm gonna give one final try to installing the video card in yet another computer, installing the drivers and playing some games. I have already proven that it works in other computers without scrambling the display, so can anyone possibly think of anything else that might be causing it to malfunction on my computer? Just to recap: I'm using a different HDD from the one I had when the problems started, I'm using a borrowed PSU, a borrowed monitor, I bought a new motherboard and as for the RAM, I stuck in a friend's module a while ago and the computer still crapped out; ALTHOUGH it only hard-locked / BSOD'd (the display did not get scrambled), and since that was on the old motherboard it could still mean it's the RAM. Aside from Memtest86, anything else I should be running to test my RAM?
 
Put your CPU in "fail safe" mode. Basically put it down to the lowest possible settings, meaning well below its default specs and see what it does. Try it out then. Thats about the only other thing I can think of without looking at it while avoiding the vid card 🙂
 
Put your CPU in "fail safe" mode. Basically put it down to the lowest possible settings, meaning well below its default specs and see what it does. Try it out then. Thats about the only other thing I can think of without looking at it while avoiding the vid card 🙂
 
The video card could be overheating, and it could definatly still be related to the PSU, you were using a generic PSU to start with, then borrowed your friends Rosewill..which is another low quality PSU..I had similar problems when I had a 6800GT and a generic PSU..then the PSU blew and took my motherboard with it..
 
Well I ran memtest86 for 9 hours in standard mode, 2 hours in uncache'd mode and 1 hour and a half in bit fade mode and got zero errors. Not a single one. So it's not the RAM. As for what you say about the PSU, you could be right... I mean, I am replacing my generic PSU with another cheap-o one, so it could still be PSU-related. I'm gonna see what I can do about scrounging up a different PSU, but I really don't want to blow 80 bucks on a brand-name one and still receive the same errors. By the way, I have tried out the "Fail-Safe" and "Fatory-Default" options before without change... it pretty much looks like it's the video card. I'm gonna try another AGP card on my system, and see what happens, instead of trying out my card on other people's systems. Maybe if I put in another card on my machine it'll scramble too...
 
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