? regarding my video card and/or monitor ;(

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by chrome_sturmen, Jun 29, 2007.

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  1. chrome_sturmen

    chrome_sturmen Registered Member

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    last night, i was transcoding an album from flac to mp3- i installed a program called "dbpoweramp" to do this task. a bit after the transcoding was done, my monitor picture went black- the computer was still running normally, but just no monitor signal. i restarted into safe mode, uninstalled dbpoweramp, then restarted normally, and everything went fine. this morning i decided to try it again- i reinstalled dbpoweramp, and again i had the same problem- if i booted normally, when windows would start the monitor would go black, but if i booted into safe mode, i could get in.

    now i have again uninstalled dbpoweramp, but now i cant boot normally, only if i uninstall my nvidia driver and use the default microsoft driver, can i get in. if i try to install my nvidia driver, the monitor goes black upon windows boot.

    oddly enough, even if i boot into linux, the login screen is scrambled and doesnt look right- and same with my first defense isr snapshots- none of them work. im beginning to think my video card has gone bad, and the installation of dbpoweramp was just incidental to the problem- thoughts??

    by the by, my videocard is about 4-5 years old, an nvidia ti4200- its been a damned good card if its gone bad. strange that i can boot with the default microsoft provided video card drivers, but not the nvidia ones that i've been using for years without trouble.
     
  2. WSFuser

    WSFuser Registered Member

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    Have you tried newer drivers or even beta ones perhaps? It may help.

    Also you could try reseating teh cards and monitor cables.
     
  3. chrome_sturmen

    chrome_sturmen Registered Member

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    Ok- this has been weird. First I plugged the monitor into a known working computer to make sure it wasnt the problem- it worked fine, so I ruled the monitor out as the problem. Then, I pulled the video card out of the agp slot, dusted it off, looked at it, wondered why it didnt work, and put it back in. Before I could boot my computer up I got a call, then later got sidetracked playing guitar for about an hour. So then I finally rebooted, and was amazed to find that upon booting, the dialogues (searching for hard drives, etc) looked normal again- before they were all discoloured etc. Then- windows boots normally, with the nvidia drivers.... Furthermore, in the past id always had to stick to an older driver- newer ones didnt display right- but I tried the newest driver for my card and was amazed to find that it works perfectly this time...

    What made me think the card was bad, was that even when I booted to my linux partition, or any of my other first defense isr snapshots- no matter what it wouldnt boot and the display was screwy- this made me assume that it wasnt something id done from within windows to cause my problem.

    The only change id made since this trouble was to install dbpoweramp- but I dont see how it couldve messed up the display even when booting to other partitions or snapshots- unless it somehow affected the video card directlyo_O?

    Once i'd uninstalled dbpoweramp and removed/reinserted my videocard, everything worked normally again- I guess i'll be looking for a different utility to transcode my flac files to mp3... Also, just to note- in nearly ten years id never seen anything like this...
     
  4. chrome_sturmen

    chrome_sturmen Registered Member

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    it seems i was hasty in assuming that dbpoweramp was the cause of my videocard trouble- a couple days after id uninstalled it, my card started acting up again. it seems that when i took it out and reseated it, it just happened to work correctly for a day or so before beginning to act up again. obviously its just that my card has began to go bad- its not the fault of dbpoweramp.
     
  5. eniqmah

    eniqmah Registered Member

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    I've had this type of problem before where the video doesn't work after playing around with some plugins for winamp. I basically downloaded a program called driver cleaner and wiped the video card drivers out, then installed the exact same driver back in and it worked. It's probably something in the driver files that got altered when the plugin was being installed.
     
  6. chrome_sturmen

    chrome_sturmen Registered Member

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    eniqmah- thanks for your input, but when i reboot, even the text displaying my bootup sequence etc is discoulored- also when i boot into linux the video doesnt work right- so if it was a driver/codec issue, youd think it wouldve only affected that paticular windows installation- you're saying these types of things can directly alter the card itself?
     
  7. WSFuser

    WSFuser Registered Member

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    you are correct chrome, in saying the problem seems to be with the card not the drivers.
     
  8. chrome_sturmen

    chrome_sturmen Registered Member

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    wsfuser- thanks for the input, im in agreeance. anyways, i can still use the card ( for now ) with the standard windows provided driver- which seems to work well enough until i can get a new card. if i use the proper nvidia driver though, the monitor shuts off as windows boots. im just glad i can use my computer at all for the time being ;)

    thanks to you guys for the input and help :D
     
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