Tried 2 vid cards and still have problems (help!)

dumbrod

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Dec 31, 2007
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I recently got an alienware with a r9 270 card. Just browsing the net or anything low task cause bsods, black screens, or graphical corruption and lockups at various times. Tried multiple driver changes, reseating, etc. The only thing that would stop the problem was uninstalling the amd driver and going without it (but then games are nixed).

I decided today to try an old nvidia 7900gt card to see if that would work better. I get the exact same issues (maybe worse now). This card ran rock solid on a low power psu for years so the psu shouldn't be the problem. Again, this card doesn't mess up with the drivers uninstalled.

Bios is up to date. Drivers were up to date. What am I missing?
 

l337n00bh4x0r

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Feb 5, 2014
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Blue screens are usually an indication if a bad driver, or a different kind of hardware failure. It could be any piece of hardware on the system. Sometimes the blue screen will give you a little line or message about what caused the crash, but if you bought the whole computer from them, I'd put the original pieces back together and ship it back under the warranty. It could be almost any driver / piece of hardware on the system, so they should just replace the whole thing.
 

dumbrod

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Dec 31, 2007
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Well I'm almost tempted to do that, but I have tried calling tech support once. Of coarse it goes to India where their phones are hard to hear on and the accents make it doubly hard to hear. Then they want to spend HOURS going though the same steps I've already gone through. Its a big hassel that I don't want to put myself though anymore. I guess I shoulda built my own instead of taking the easy way out!

The bsods I get are video drivers, but I'm still baffled a different vid card is causing similar problems. I might try a clean reinstall of the operating system since things started happening after a virus. I did a reinstall on top of windows but it didnt solve everything...
 

l337n00bh4x0r

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Feb 5, 2014
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You can try to do a full reset of the PC. In Windows 8, open a command prompt and type "shutdown /r /o", which will "restart" the computer and go into the advanced boot options. From there go to "Troubleshoot", then reset it and have it delete all your files. BACK IT UP FIRST! This essentially wipes the whole system and re-installs Windows. I'm not sure what the command for Win 7 is, I kinda went from XP straight to 8. ^_^