- Mar 22, 2013
- 2
- 0
- 10,510
Hi everybody!
I hope i'm posting this in the correct category (and i'm sorry for my bad english, i'm doing the best i can !). I've tried searching the forums here and there for help, and i've come across a few similar situations, but i guess this time, i can't seem to solve this mystery without asking for further help. Thanks in advance.
So my computer is kind of old. An ECS P965T-A mobo (which i was told, is kind of crappy), an intel dual core 2 2,13Ghz CPU, 4gb ram and a GeForce 8800GT. It's been fine for something like 5-6 years, but a few months ago, my PSU died and i had to change it. It was a cheap PSU, and the one i bought to replace it is a Cooler Master 400. Maybe it was a bad choice.. Maybe another important thing, the BIOS was flashed one year ago.
A few days ago, strange characters started appearing randomly during POST and the whole boot sequence. At that time, when entering the BIOS, everything went back to normal (at least the BIOS screen was showing correctly). During POST, there's something like random apostrophes ( ' ) displaying. Then, during the rest of the boot sequence, random characters everywhere. But after a few secs, the win XP boot screen shows up (without any noticeable display problems), everythings seems to be okay, but it ends up in a black screen and nothing happens.
Today, i noticed that even the BIOS screen is now displaying those strange characters everywhere.
When i searched the forums, i read about people trying to go into safe mode. I've been thinking the whole time my problem was hardware related, but i thought i might give it a try.While trying to boot into safe mode, i get stuck at mup.sys. I've read about that, and maybe i didn't get it right but it seems like it's a different issue. In the end, i'm quite confused.
My main hypothesis is a dead GPU (maybe because of the PSU ? Or MoBo Failure ?). I've never noticed something like extreme overheating (as far as EVEREST and the BIOS can tell), my fans are quite clean (including the GPU one) and i spent quite a long time checking the power supply information in both EVEREST and the BIOS to make sure the values were normal (and didn't notice anything wrong) when i changed the PSU (5-6 months ago).
I started trying to reseat everything, tried with one ram stick, then the other, and it all gave the same result.
With these informations, would you suggest additional testing or do you think the hypothesis of a dying GPU is correct ?
Thanks in advance !
I hope i'm posting this in the correct category (and i'm sorry for my bad english, i'm doing the best i can !). I've tried searching the forums here and there for help, and i've come across a few similar situations, but i guess this time, i can't seem to solve this mystery without asking for further help. Thanks in advance.
So my computer is kind of old. An ECS P965T-A mobo (which i was told, is kind of crappy), an intel dual core 2 2,13Ghz CPU, 4gb ram and a GeForce 8800GT. It's been fine for something like 5-6 years, but a few months ago, my PSU died and i had to change it. It was a cheap PSU, and the one i bought to replace it is a Cooler Master 400. Maybe it was a bad choice.. Maybe another important thing, the BIOS was flashed one year ago.
A few days ago, strange characters started appearing randomly during POST and the whole boot sequence. At that time, when entering the BIOS, everything went back to normal (at least the BIOS screen was showing correctly). During POST, there's something like random apostrophes ( ' ) displaying. Then, during the rest of the boot sequence, random characters everywhere. But after a few secs, the win XP boot screen shows up (without any noticeable display problems), everythings seems to be okay, but it ends up in a black screen and nothing happens.
Today, i noticed that even the BIOS screen is now displaying those strange characters everywhere.
When i searched the forums, i read about people trying to go into safe mode. I've been thinking the whole time my problem was hardware related, but i thought i might give it a try.While trying to boot into safe mode, i get stuck at mup.sys. I've read about that, and maybe i didn't get it right but it seems like it's a different issue. In the end, i'm quite confused.
My main hypothesis is a dead GPU (maybe because of the PSU ? Or MoBo Failure ?). I've never noticed something like extreme overheating (as far as EVEREST and the BIOS can tell), my fans are quite clean (including the GPU one) and i spent quite a long time checking the power supply information in both EVEREST and the BIOS to make sure the values were normal (and didn't notice anything wrong) when i changed the PSU (5-6 months ago).
I started trying to reseat everything, tried with one ram stick, then the other, and it all gave the same result.
With these informations, would you suggest additional testing or do you think the hypothesis of a dying GPU is correct ?
Thanks in advance !
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