ahhh! whats happening to my computer?!?!

[Tifa's Real Lover(really]

well yesterday before i logged off it happened again, i rebooted and today ive used it for about a good hour burning cds and such and that didnt happen...yet


heres a better picture

ahhh!.JPG


that should look good enough rubah

[ValiantKnight]

Something is definitely wrong in video land with that picture. Could possibly be the driver, overheating of the video card(maybe?), cable between computer and monitor, monitor itself, software program trying to make the video card do crazy things(game with bad settings or a virus/spyware)... or a few other things. Trouble is trying to isolate and find out which one it is.

Were you recently playing a game or using any kind of software that would have lots of graphics or otherwise involve the video card a great deal more than normal internet browsing/Microsoft Word/regular windows operating when this occured? This would point to overheating or invalid settings in the game/program maybe... Or a driver issue(ie a problem with graphics acceleration... directX maybe).

If it happens all the time, regardless of what you are doing, then it is still possible it could be spyware/virus that is loaded and doesn't terminate that is doing the above, however I've never seen malware that messed with the video settings. Also if it is doing it all the time, it may be hardware/driver.

Isolating to hardware/software would help alot. But to do this we would need some sort of CD booting application. Windows XP install disc, or something else that boots from CD and doesn't require your hard drive. A simple Windows 98 startup floppy may work as well, but it may be difficult to ascertain video problems in DOS mode.

The idea is, there are multiple parts of your computer that make the video appear on your screen.

The monitor.
The monitor cord to the computer
The video card itself.
The motherboard that gives power and instructions to the card
The power supply that gives power to the motherboard.
The drivers the tell the Windows XP operating system how to control and talk to the video card.
Any programs running from that hard drive that are in RAM and are telling the motherboard > video card what to display.

The power supply or motherboard(whole, as the video slot could be bad)are unlikely.. you should be having crashes, and lots of other faults if they were going bad.
The monitor can be tested by taking your monitor to another computer, or another monitor to your computer.
The cord can be done similarly...
The video card would require opening the case, and that will void most warranties if you have one.
Same for the motherboard and power supply
The driver can be removed via what some have said in this thread, and then put back in via a downloaded drive from the manufacturer of your card.
Programs running on the hard drive can be neutralized by booting from a CD bootable software on a CD. This skips the hard drive in the boot process completely, and as long as the computer was OFF(cold boot) before you booted to the CD, no virus/malware/misconfigured program can load(per all knowledge I know of viruses/spyware) unless it is on that CD.

If the problem happens quite often, then testing each step will tell you quickly whether that is the problem or not. However if the problem is very rare(once/week) then it may take a long time to hammer out each spot as the source or not....

I may be crazy and none of these may really help, but this is all from memory and things seen over the years. But I am far from knowledgeable

ie, don't trust me to be right, I have been wrong before. Just trying to be helpful if possible. If another knows more, feel free to correct me.

[Tifa's Real Lover(really]

its only happened twice that has happened to this computer ever, and it was yesterday, hasnt happened today, i havent changed anything (settings, parts, etc), i just left the computer as it was, so far its all going good

[ValiantKnight]

If you do use a Windows XP install disc, to test if its a program on the hard drive doing it.. please don't accidently reformat your system or something

The point there is the XP install disc runs completely by itself, and that would eliminate any viruses/spyware/badly configured games/programs/acceleration programs if it were also bad. So by loading the Windows XP Cd into the drive and booting cold(turning the computer all the way off and back on after few seconds), you clear the ram and aren't accessing the hard drive... when you press a key to start windows XP install. It would go through a blue screen, where the CD loads its drivers into ram.. then waits for you to press enter or F8 I believe. The point being... it has loaded drivers and is displaying a screen to your monitor with no outside interference(spyware/programs/faulty drivers). And you just wouldn't want to let it reinstall windows or anything, because that first screen is good enough.


ie.. the windows XP disc has its own basic drivers.. and if it messed up with the disc in the drive running from boot(because those drivers are pretty generic and should work with ANY hardware, and have no viruses on them/etc), then we would know it would be a hardware problem more than likely.

However given the rarity of your problem, you would likely have to leave it on that screen for DAYS, since you are very rarely getting this issue.. (ie you would have to test that long from a scientific point to rule out this part as being the problem.... and testing = leaving the computer on from a different boot source than the hard drive... ie CD ROM)

The bad part is, most computers these days don't come with a Windows software disc...
They come with a "image CD" that has a ghosting type program used by the company who made your computer, so theoritically this won't work likely.

ie... if its something like "Dell software recovery" that is bad, because it's likely one screen, and it asks you yes or no.. and then starts to reformat/reinstall your system via ghosting software and an image of your hard drive when the computer was first built/installed.

So basically I just don't want you to use a bootable CD, hurt your system, then be mad at me
Perhaps i'm just paranoid ......

Yea I'm crazy.

[o_O]

That picture above is either affected by compression in the jpeg format when it was saved, or there is something wrong with either your graphics card or drivers.

The randomly scattered dots/noise around the screen seem to be arranged by colour, which would imply that there was actually another window sitting active above your desktop. For that reason and because you are using a legacy card, I'm thinking that your graphics card could be dying.

Just be aware, if you have an XP install CD, choosing the repair option will fix system drivers that would have come with it from the factory.
Note that this won't fix anything if it's a hardware problem, or a problem with a driver that was installed after Windows.
Choosing any other option will probably either delete everything, or install a second copy of Windows, which you don't want.

[Tifa's Real Lover(really]

it came back

real bad.JPG


it looks even worse, i rebooted and it still came back