[Azazel]

Heya.

My sister's PC started acting up today, as she was trying to launch Sims 3. At first it got some seagull-shaped artifacts across the entire screen while the game was loading, and it froze up, leaving no choice but to force a reboot. Now it's throwing BSOD's.

Here's a picture:



Some specs:

Intel Core2Duo E5200
4GB Corsair DDR2 RAM
GeForce 9800GTX
500GB Seagate Barracuda HDD
550W PSU
Windows 7 32-bit

I first suspected the graphics card, and I checked the its temp right after a crash, but it was a mere 64C, so I kinda ruled that out. Her Seagate harddrive is brand new, installed it yesterday. Could that be the problem?

[yojo2]

64C is a very low temp... suspiciously low, in fact. I think it might got broken, you should check if it works fine in another pc.

[Wolf68k]

Just because the temps are low doesn't mean the card isn't bad.
And 64C isn't exactly low. 65C might be low while playing, some games, but for idle that too me is on the high side.

If it BSOD'ed then it should have made a minidump. Go to C:\Windows\Minidump
Zip the file and upload it some place and I'll have a look at it.
Mostly likely it'll just come back as a nVidia driver being the issue which doesn't mean much if the hardware is the problem but it might point directly to being the hardware and not a simply the driver.

It could also be the PSU

[yojo2]

Okay, I kinda f*cked up... I thought that 9800GTXs run much hotter. Sorry.
But anyway, what I was trying to get across is that correct temperature doesn't automatically mean the card is functioning properly.

[Spider-Vice]

Could be a recurrent driver issue, the minidump will most likely trace back to the NVIDIA Kernel file. Try doing a full reinstall using Driver Sweeper and installing the latest driver version (I don't think NVIDIA's Clean Install does a lot..).

[Azazel]

QUOTE (Spider Vice @ Tuesday, Sep 20 2011, 21:20)

Could be a recurrent driver issue, the minidump will most likely trace back to the NVIDIA Kernel file. Try doing a full reinstall using Driver Sweeper and installing the latest driver version (I don't think NVIDIA's Clean Install does a lot..).

It's running a clean Win 7 install (from yesterday) with the newest Nvidia drivers, but I guess I'll try a clean driver install if nothing else works.

I tried removing the graphics card, reinstalling it making sure that the power leads were inserted properly, etc. and it booted up fine, and handled everything fine right up until the point where I tried launching Sims 3 again. Artefacts, and then after a few seconds it seemed like it lost the signal to the graphics card entirely - monitor flashed a few times before simply going black. I could boot it up again after letting it sit for a while, though.

I guess it has to be some sort of hardware fault on the card.

[Wolf68k]

How old/new is the graphics card?
Just out of curiosity what brand is it too?

[SyphonPayne]

The first suspect would be the graphics card. Second, PSU. As Wolf68k said, check out the minidump, specifically, get the stop code (BugCheckCode.)

If the system was working fine before, and no driver changes or major program changes were made, then it is doubtful that reinstalling drivers will help this situation. However, you can try it, just in case.


Do you have any other graphics cards that you can try in the machine? Uninstall the drivers for the 9800GTX, install whatever you can spare, install drivers for it, see if the same problem occurs. If not, then you've found the problem. If so, then I would suspect the PSU next.

[sivispacem]

When my 8800GTX cooked itself, I saw artifacts identical to those in every way. Never figured out the full cause, but the fan wasn't operating properly an even after I dismantled the card, re-applied thermal grease to all the thermal contacts and replaced the heat sink it still didn't work properly.

[GTA3Freak-2001]

Yeah sounds like the same story as my old 8800GT when it kicked the bucket, it was a Galaxy brand which I believe was part of the problem.

[dragon_goran_mijo]

QUOTE (GTA3Freak-2001 @ Wednesday, Sep 21 2011, 05:17)

Yeah sounds like the same story as my old 8800GT when it kicked the bucket, it was a Galaxy brand which I believe was part of the problem.

This post feels so surreal.

[sivispacem]

QUOTE (dragon_goran_mijo @ Thursday, Jun 7 2012, 23:28)

QUOTE (GTA3Freak-2001 @ Wednesday, Sep 21 2011, 05:17) Yeah sounds like the same story as my old 8800GT when it kicked the bucket, it was a Galaxy brand which I believe was part of the problem. This post feels so surreal.

Nice 9-month bump on a resolved topic, you utter numpty.