Hardware-Help needed

[castorp]

[sorry to bother you guys with this hardware-shit, but as this the only forum I visit and my Internet just turned annoyingly slow…]

I have a (passively cooled) GeForce 6600 in a Windows XP-SP2 operated computer and everything worked quite well (the GeForce overheated from time to time, but I got used to it) until today, when my monitor went into standby without reason. After a forced reboot even the first bios-loading-screen (-thing) showed vertical red lines, as did every loading screen hereafter, some were green, some white. Still readable, but messed up. And when the loading process reached Windows, the monitor went into standby again.

In 'secured mode' (the mode reachable through F8 – I’m not sure about the English name) Windows loads, so I deleted the graphic card in the hardware-section. Without graphic card drivers Windows loads (the vertical lines while loading are still there), I have all the fancy colures (32bit), most of the resolution-options, so it works. But if I try to reinstall the drivers (I tried two versions of the Nvidia-Forceware) Windows won’t show and the monitor goes standby.

Does anyone have an idea what’s going on? I can work without graphic card drivers for a while (no games of course), but every piece of scrolling is painfully slow (scrolling down a webpage makes me feel 56k again). Is there a way to make at least the scrolling normal again without a properly installed graphic card?

[ysbreker]

I think your gfx card has given up the ghost and is now broken. What you could try is reseating the card. (take it out of the slot and put it back in again) This way you might get it to work again. But it really sounds like a case of hardware failure to me :/

[castorp]

Thanks ysbreker.

Anyone with a different opinion (please!)?

Okay, so the fucker is broken. As already asked, is there a way to make the scrolling go smooth and fast again, with my new broken gpu? Maybe something with virtual memory (yeah, I still don't have an idea what I'm talking about)? It still can do colures and 1024x768 and youtube and windows (except for the scrolling...did I mention the scrolling...it kills me).

Okay, so the fucker is broken. But I need a working pc, but neither have the time nor the money to properly upgrade, so I thought about a downgrade. I found two cheap gpu's on Amazon, which one would you suggest?

MSI GF FX5200-TD128LF

MSI RX9250-TD128

Or does anyone have a better idea? Scrolling? Anyone?

And thanks for putting up with my silly problems.

[Noyb]

Have you tried using System Restore to roll windows back to an earlier date just to make sure it isn't a software issue? It does sound pretty bad, though.

[manny_c44]

It sounds pretty broken. I once had the scrolling issue with my graphics card, it also made refreshing within a window (ie: My Computer) painfully slow...this ended up being an AGP speed issue...graphics cards have the option of choosing between AGP 2x 4x etc, and my card needed to be lowered. Below its specifications

Of course you probably have PCI express so that doesn't apply!

Yeah, sorry. It's probably broken.

[baconian]

until you get a new graphics card, plug the monitor into your motherboard instead of your graphics card and use whatever updated graphics drivers for it you can find.

most mobos have onboard graphics acceleration nowadays so you should be able to play older games too.

[Nachimir]

Sounds fucked, but might be worth swapping out with a cheap/old graphics card just to make sure it isn't the mobo. Could also be overheating if the cooler has been knocked.

FWIW, I have a passively cooled 6600 too (Gigabyte? Blue card with a gold heatpipe, it was a good deal at the time, but...), and even the non-passively cooled 6600s were renowned for being a bit crap and unstable. A bunch of cards only worked when the standard fans were replaced with something better.

I've not heard awful things about the heatpipe versions, but no 6600s are exactly brilliant - Until some new drivers came out a few months ago, mine had perpetual driver/stability issues that would cause my system to reboot if things got too intense.