Video glitch on new build

[willdawg]

So I just finished my newest build the other day and have been running into a problem with the video freezing. The image on both my DVI monitor and my VGA TV gets a slight screen door effect but at first I didn't see it as I was sitting back from the TV it was that slight.

The first time it happened was when I was watching King Kong on HD DVD. I restarted the system and began watching again and it did it again, this time my computer rebooted itself and on the reboot had the "Your system has recovered from a serious error." And of course upon sending the report to Microsoft it said that there was nothing known on this error.

Later I put Gladiator into the HD drive (this is a standard DVD) and the system froze up.

The next day I put Gladiator in to the DVD-ROM drive and watched it through with out problems.

Today I installed Doom 3 and began playing it and literally took 10 steps in the game and it froze up. I rebooted and loaded again and got through a bit more (though my best weapon at the time was my fists) and it froze again.

At first I thought it was the HD DVD drive, and after Gladiator worked fine in the DVD drive I assumed I was right, but now the Doom issue (the HD has been disconnected) makes me question it all again.

System setup (everything running at stock):

Windows XP Home 2002 SP2
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz
PNY nVidia GeForce 7600GS 512MB PCIe 16x
Xbox 360 HD DVD drive
Lite-on DVD-ROM LH-16D1P-187
Sony DVD RW DRU-820A
MSI P6N SLI Platinum Motherboard
G.SKILL 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800

[Planefreak]

Install the latest drivers from www.nvidia.com
If that doesn't work disable dual monitors and see if it still does it

[doubledragon5]

What type of psu and wattage...

[willdawg]

I just got it to reboot again. And by that I mean that it did it on its own while I was watching a movie. This time it rebooted during a dialogue scene early in Star Wars Episode III. This time though I did see a blue screen of death briefly before it rebooted. I don't think it is a heat issue as each time it reboots I check the temperatures and they are under 38C.

My PSU is an AcBel API4PC23 500W and I'm using nVidia's ForceWare version 93.71

Also I just tried disabling the dual monitors and because I didn't want to watch another movie all the way through tonight I threw Doom 3 at just the DVI monitor and I got it to freeze again about 2 minutes into the start of the game, but this time the sound of the game kept going like it was supposed to (not a looping of the last few seconds) and I hit Ctrl+Alt+Del a couple of times and got the screen to clear. The screen went totally blank and went into standby but I did hear a Windows ding and the machine did not reboot until I did it manually.

[LeftyAce]

In case it gives you another blue screen, how about you go in and disable "Automatic reboot on system error" so you can read the blue screen. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstr...utorestart.htm


Also, I'm not sure of the quality/reliability of that powersupply. You should consider getting one off of the "recommended" list here: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=131195

Flaky psus can cause all sorts of issues, and bad ones can fry other components when they die.

[glc]

Acbels are quality units.

[LeftyAce]

Ok, then that's probably not the problem. Didn't see Acbel on the "recommended list" so I assumed the worst.

[glc]

One of the links in the reference thread is to this:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=4146

Acbel is a tier 2c unit. Good enough for me.

[willdawg]

Thanks LeftyAce for the heads up on the blue screen. It rebooted again, this time while surfing around Best Buy's web site, nothing but my browser was running. The blus screen showed this under technical information

*** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005,0x805A5080,0xA4797C58,0x00000000)

I just wish I knew how to understand what that means, if anything.

[LeftyAce]

Microsoft's knowledgebase makes reference to bad ram. Download and run memtest86+ (Either from the memtest website or get the Ultimate Boot CD which has many other diagnostic tools that may come in handy. )

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315335

Google's great for deciphering BSOD errors.

[willdawg]

So ran the extended tests of the MS memory diagnostic and it said failed on everything (even though the standard check yesterday said passed. So I went and got a new stick of RAM and pulled the other one, now a 1G stick of Kingston PC2-4200 is in there. I ran it on standard just to check and it came back all passed. I loaded up Doom 3 and began playing. I got probably 10 to 15 minutes into it before the game locked up. I hit C+A+D after the monitor went to standby but the system stayed on, no reboot. I had setup a check before I played to see if Windows was still running after something like thos would happen and sure enough windows is still running. I had setup so that i could hit the Windows key on the keyboard then the down arrow and it would launch media player and play the system ding sound and right now I can press play on my keyboard and make the computer ding if I want and pause the sound.

So now RMA the video card?

ps I feel like such a dweeb for not Googling the error code.

[newbuilder14]

I think you should still try memtest86+ - it is a great program for diagnosing bad memory.

[LeftyAce]

Concur. memtest86+ is very thorough (but takes a while to run). First, try re seating all the ram and the video card.

[willdawg]

Well I pulled my video card and gave it to my buddy to put it in his perfectly working computer and he go it to freeze up. So it looks like it's RMA time. I'll probably upgrade to an 8800.

Thanks everyone for the help.