Help! My PC crashes whenever I use a Graphics card

dyinisus · Mar 28, 2013

I Have bought two new cards and yet my computer crashes whenever I use anything other than the onboard video. The last card i got which is galaxy geforce 210 worked for a few months but then started to crash again. I swapped it out with another 210 by pny and that one immediately started to crash, restart. Is there something else that could be wrong, its hard to believe that all three of these cards were bad!

EzioAs · Mar 28, 2013

We'll need more info. What's the rest of your PC specs? Have you installed the latest GeForce driver?

atomicWAR · Mar 28, 2013

boot in safe mode (hit f8 before the windows splash screen...safe mode with networking). go into device manager (you can click on start menu right click the computer and pick properties...you should see device manager on the top left)....once there choose display adapters then right click on you graphics card and choose uninstall but be sure to click the delete driver box. finally reinstall drivers while still in safe mode...then reboot your all done. try that. also more computer specs would help us trouble shoot this better.

dyinisus · Mar 28, 2013

Sorry, first time posting, I already thought I was being too wordy. I have a HP m8430f, which came with a geforce 8600, that was good for me for the last 2 years, but it started to go out causing random restarts, artifacts, etc. So I got the 210 with 1gb RAM and that worked for about 4 months, then i started getting restarts, booting up into multiple monitors without having multiple monitors or just booting to a blank screen after bios. So I figured i blew another one, and bought the pny 1gb geforce 210. That one did the same thing right away... so I figured it wasn't the graphics card and returned it... trying now to fix whatever is causing me to crash when i use anything other than the onboard. But I will try the advice you gave, it can't hurt.

atomicWAR · Mar 28, 2013

ghave you tried the driver reinstall as i stated yet?

rdc85 · Mar 28, 2013

How old is the comp?

are u had other psu to test with ?

ttcboy · Mar 28, 2013

Seems like a PSU problem rather then the graphic card problem.

atomicWAR · Mar 28, 2013

ttcboy :

i agree it likely is a PSU issue but i want to rule out the easy stuff first. uneven power can make a system unstable and erratic.

dyinisus · Mar 28, 2013

I booted up in safe mode, which was not easy in windows 8, uninstalled the display adapter, then ran the driver disc. It came back that the installation failed because it could not install the phys x driver. So I reran the installation and was given an optio to run a clean install, I checked it and it removed everything associated. Then it restarted again and I ran the disk again And it still failed the phys x. I got the computer new in the fall of 2008

atomicWAR · Mar 28, 2013

did you click the delete driver box?

dyinisus · Mar 28, 2013

yes and it did because the device manager showed the device as an unknown media which I never see there before

dyinisus · Mar 28, 2013

I think maybe it failed because its windows 8 and the driver disk gave me only an option for 7

bryonhowley · Mar 28, 2013

dyinisus :

I would agree with that you should go to Nvidia and download the latest Windows 8 drivers from there site. At this time that is version 314.21 select Windows 8 and x64 or x32 depending on which ever you are using.

atomicWAR · Mar 28, 2013

dyinisus :

i didn't know that you fed it win 7 drivers...yeah go to nvidia home page and get win 8 drivers and do again as i stated.

dyinisus · Mar 28, 2013

I successfully installed the driver but minutes afterward it crashed. I restarted and verified new driver was installed

atomicWAR · Mar 28, 2013

bummer....i had my fingers crossed for you. ok here are my present worries...it could be capacitor wear on either your mother board or your power supply. over time the voltage out put becomes unstable...and as you can guess so does the entire system. it might explain why a new card helped for a bit but not for long. you need to get/borrow a power supply and test your system with it...or conversely a motherboard. and hear comes the part i hate saying with all my techie soul....if you don't have those parts or access to them. its time to take it in to a tech who does and can rule those issues out. i am sorry the news is not better.

you might try a fresh install of windows...but i fear the results will be the same.

dyinisus · Mar 28, 2013

How does the psu connect to the motherboard? I have an adapter that is used to power up hard drives

atomicWAR · Mar 28, 2013

depends on your mother board...all use the 20+4 pin to connect to the motherboard as main power. there will also be an 8 pin power connector....now some boards also require a molex or a 6 pin as well but those are rare and usually for high end overclocking boards.

dyinisus · Mar 29, 2013

ttcboy :

I took your advice and bought a brand new 460 W PSU. Removed the old one and the computer is still crashing! What else could it be? If its not the graphics card and not the PSU?

rdc85 · Mar 29, 2013

Is the mother board had another pci-ex x16 slot ? if there is, try install the GC to the other slot..

If all things fails and the problem is unknown it will had to back to basic trouble shooting....
- Clean the case and make sure all the connector are is secure....
- Try clear CMOS..
- Run memtest86 with one stick at one time...
- Run deep scan of the hardrive.. (search for bad sector)
- Run malware / virus scan...
- Try reinstall the driver at worst reinstall (clean install) the OS...

ttcboy · Mar 29, 2013

dyinisus :

Try the steps that "rdc85" recommanded.

Are you still using the old graphic card or using the new card ? coz if u r still using the old card, ur previous PSU might done some damage to it.

My advice is to RMA ur graphic card and try again. If the problem persists, there is only one culprit left and that's ur Motherboard but as far as my experience goes, it is rarely the case.

Make sure to clean ur PCI-E slot with air blower and seat the card properly. After you power on the PC, check whether the fan on the card are running as well.

Another question is that u mentioned that ur old galaxy card work for a few months, so, that time, u r using Vista , win 7 or win 8 ? coz if you upgrade from Vista/win 7 to win 8, u have to re-install all the chipset drivers for your motherboard and if u miss out, some device will not work properly that .

I noticed from the HP website that your machine original OS is Vista and can be upgrade to Win7 but on the driver support page, i can only see the Vista drivers and not even the Win7 drivers which in my opinion, HP won't have any win 8 chipset drivers for this machine.

Just do a quick check and found that ur motherboard is using intel G33 chipset
and it is not supported under Win 8 in Intel website.

Is there anyway for u to revert back to vista or Win7 and test the system again ? The problem might be due to lack of proper chipset driver and at the mean time, pls update ur bios to latest version as well.

dyinisus · Apr 8, 2013

ttcboy :

dyinisus :

I re-installed Windows 7 (I'm having enough frustration learning win 8 RT on my tablet to need the headache of having pro on my desktop always reminding me of all that I can't do on RT!) I inserted the original Geforce 8600 and that worked fine for a week, then it started to do what it did before... Flash to blank screen, come back with a balloon saying the display nvidia driver recovered from a crash; which is very different from what the 210 card does, which is going blank all together or the computer re-starting. Which is what the other card did too. I don't know what to do now, you're right the hp site does not provide downloads under any other OS besides Vista, but there really hasn't been any other recent updates for this computer since a Bios update in 2010. I'm going to buy another card for it... maybe it IS a freak streak of bad luck that I got two duds right after one another.

I did run memtest and everything checked out, If clearing the Cmos is removing the battery, then i've done that too. and the answer to another question about the slots: I only have the one PCIe.

Quentin Chalmers · May 11, 2014

If you don't mind me asking, did you ever figure out what the problem was? I have had this exact same issue for 4 months now.

Help! My PC crashes whenever I use a Graphics card

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