Video card crashing Win7?

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bitmechanic

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Mar 3, 2007
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My Win7 computer suddenly started having video problems. Two to four narrow, vertical rainbow stripes appeared while the “Starting Windows” screen displayed. (I have pictures if it would help.) Then the logon screen would fill with dozens of columns of backslash-like designs. I removed and re-seated the video card and removed and re-attached the DVI cable. No change. Thinking my video card (ATI Radeon Sapphire X1950 XT) bit the dust, I purchased and installed another video card (EVGA GeForce 8400 GS). Then the fun really started: the hard-disk access light glowed continuously, but the computer refused to boot. I couldn’t even access the BIOS menu, so I had no way to confirm my optical drive was in the boot hierarchy. Thinking it could be the monitor, I powered the system down, disconnected the monitor and attached a known-good monitor. No boot and still no access to BIOS. The system won’t boot from my Windows rescue CD or even from the original Windows installation CD. That leaves me thinking my boot drive died. I plan to replace it and load a backup image of the old drive. I’m curious: Has anyone else seen this combination of video problems followed by boot failure after replacing a video card? Is the real culprit likely to be a failed hard disk drive, or is it something I’m overlooking? Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
 
Solution
monsta
Try and reset the bios from the Motherboard jumper pins and try booting it again to see if there's any change.
If you have onboard video , remove the graphics card and hook the Monitor up to the output on the Motherboard, see if you can get in at least.
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monsta

monsta

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Try and reset the bios from the Motherboard jumper pins and try booting it again to see if there's any change.
If you have onboard video , remove the graphics card and hook the Monitor up to the output on the Motherboard, see if you can get in at least.
 
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Solution
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bitmechanic

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Jumpered pins 15 and 16 and checked the power supply output on all pins. All measurements were within tolerance. Many thanks for the suggestion!

 
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bitmechanic

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Appreciate the suggestions. Unfortunately, no on-board video, so I ordered yet another video card ( an el cheapo EVGA 8400GS that cost 10% what my original card cost when new!) and ultimately had success.

I couldn't figure out why a video card would crash the system so completely, so I guessed there was another piece to the puzzle. I found another 300 GB WD VelicoRaptor that was an exact replacement for the original hard disk. (Yes, this is an old system!) I disconnected the original hard disk, installed the new EVGA video card and booted the machine from a live Ubuntu distro.

Without the hard disk connected, I was able to boot after futzing around with the BIOS, which now, thankfully, was again available.

Now that the system was working minimally, I initialized and quick formatted the new hard disk on my wife's computer (thank you dear!), connected the new hard disk to my computer and used BING (I so dearly love that program!) to re-image the new hard disk with a relatively recent image. I still had to use my Windows restore disk to fix a minor problem (Windows is cranky about cloned boot disks) but the system is back, good as new.

Very much appreciate your suggestions as it got me thinking along the right lines!

 
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