desh | (no subject)

So, computer problems! Anyone want to help?

Several times in the past month or two, my computer would lock up for about 10 seconds. The screen would blink, and then I'd get an error popup that my graphics card/driver/something was no longer responding and rendering properly, so I've been switched to software rendering. Software rendering is quite slow.

Then, within the past half-week, my computer frequently just locks up entirely. Nothing works; can't even move the mouse. It doesn't recover at all. I just updated my video drivers last night (luckily finishing the process before the next lockup), and that didn't fix the problem.

There are two reasons I suspect this isn't software-related: One, this lockup once happened at the Windows login "select user" screen right after a reboot. I can't imagine any malware being able to screw things up there. And two, the error message described above. On the other hand, I'm currently running a Norton Ghost backup which (last I checked) hasn't locked up. Ghost works by rebooting into a barebones DOS session (with a graphical display, but not much of one) to do its thing.

So what do y'all think? Windows corruption? Malware? Bad video card? Bad mobo? Bad power supply? Cooling problems?

I run a small form factor desktop. My motherboard doesn't have onboard video. I run an AGP video card, but I have a PCI slot too. I'm running Win XP SP1.

Any help would be appreciated. (Please no "Get a Mac" type comments. I'm a bit too frustrated right now for jokes like that.) Thanks, y'all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thanks, both of you! And yes, it's ATI.

But how am I supposed to do this? In safe mode, perhaps? I didn't think it was possible to run programs between uninstalling and reinstalling video drivers...or uninstall video drivers at all, for that matter. I mean, how can you see what you're doing?

Elise did it once when she had to install a new monitor... i think she memorized all the necessary keystrokes and did it blindly.

Not that i'm suggesting that.

Desh, don't do that - but dude! So cool! Like fixing my ipod after my students switched it into Japanese, but so much hotter.

If you uninstall your video drivers and then reboot, it will still display using the default VGA drivers(the same ones it uses when booting in safe mode) and say that it found new hardware. Cancel the install of the video drivers. After installing driver cleaner 3 you can reboot into safe mode and run the program. Do a full cleaning, even the cab files. It can take up to 20 or 30 minutes to do. Removing all traces of the video drivers, even in the windows setup cab files, is important. What can happen is that when you install the new drivers, it ends up using two different versions at once. This is such a common problem that ATI made their own utility (however it doesn't work very well). Once you've ran DC3, you can then reboot into normal mode. Again, remember to hit cancel if it says it found new hardware.

After you are running with no ATI drivers installed you can let it run for a while and see if you are going to get any lockups, this will help you tell if it's a serious hardware problem or a driver issue. When you are ready to install make sure you have the latest driver package from ATI and install using that. Do not ever use the windows hardware wizard for ATI or nVidia video drivers.

Hope that helps. :)

Another thing you should do, if possible, is update to the absolute latest version of windows XP. Download them all, they are important. Some of the new ATI drivers will not work pre SP2. Run the disk cleanup utility. Defragment your hard drive about 3 times in a row, and run spybot Search & Destroy.

As a note, malware and spyware can affect your computer at the login screen if it has gotten itself into certain parts of the registry. The system space programs are ran before you log in, with user space programs being launched after you login. (A good example of some programs that run before login are VNC Server, Apache 2 server in service mode, and remote desktop server.)

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Driver cleaner

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