- Sep 18, 2014
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Hey, guys. Listen, I had a bit of a question for you all, and hopefully the answer will be fairly apparent to you all without too many details, as even though I've used technology for a long time, a lot of the finer details often go over my head.
Anyways, two days ago my computer died. My screen got a massive graphical error, and while everything seemed to be continuing in the background as far as audio, I couldn't see anything on the screen. It looked like someone put a giant magnet on it. Naturally I turned it off and rebooted. Immediately my boot screen had a number of discolored lines running horizontally, which eventually turned into a series of vertical, red bars of graphical discoloration. Shortly after displaying the windows boot logo, the computer gave me a bluescreen and cited the driver in error as atikmdag.sys.
Well, I restarted the computer and instead tried to start it in Safe mode when prompted. In safe mode, the computer booted up fine, but it still had the massive graphical errors as vertical red bars running up and down my screen. These discolorations are around on every screen, and only seem to fade when the screen is quite bright, such as on the Google home page. The darker the page, the more brightly the bars appear.
A friend of mine who'd built the computer in the first place suggested that it was probably hardware failure, and that now would be as good a time as any to go ahead and reformat my hard drive, since conflicting drivers had been a potential culprit of a number of problems I'd had with the computer, and there was a chance that reformatting it might help. Anyways, we wipe the drive and reinstall windows. After it gets installed, it boots up just fine and I create my profile and log in and everything, and it all appears to be normal... except the discoloration is still there. Keep in mind that this is NOT safe mode.
Well, I thought it was a little weird that it successfully booted up that time, so I decided to try and restart the computer. Sure enough, it gave me the exact same bluescreen when I started it up. And then again and again. So, then I fully reinstalled windows once again after wiping my drive, re-downloaded Chrome, spent most of the day watching a wonderfully discolored rendition of Scrubs on Netflix and then came here. I can't turn off the computer or else I won't be able to boot it up again. I have a new graphics card on the way since I am almost positive that it's dead, but I figured I'd ask you guys anyways.
I understand that this story is terribly vague, and I'm not really looking for any perfect answers. I just want to know if this sounds like a dead video card based on what I told you guys.
Anyways, two days ago my computer died. My screen got a massive graphical error, and while everything seemed to be continuing in the background as far as audio, I couldn't see anything on the screen. It looked like someone put a giant magnet on it. Naturally I turned it off and rebooted. Immediately my boot screen had a number of discolored lines running horizontally, which eventually turned into a series of vertical, red bars of graphical discoloration. Shortly after displaying the windows boot logo, the computer gave me a bluescreen and cited the driver in error as atikmdag.sys.
Well, I restarted the computer and instead tried to start it in Safe mode when prompted. In safe mode, the computer booted up fine, but it still had the massive graphical errors as vertical red bars running up and down my screen. These discolorations are around on every screen, and only seem to fade when the screen is quite bright, such as on the Google home page. The darker the page, the more brightly the bars appear.
A friend of mine who'd built the computer in the first place suggested that it was probably hardware failure, and that now would be as good a time as any to go ahead and reformat my hard drive, since conflicting drivers had been a potential culprit of a number of problems I'd had with the computer, and there was a chance that reformatting it might help. Anyways, we wipe the drive and reinstall windows. After it gets installed, it boots up just fine and I create my profile and log in and everything, and it all appears to be normal... except the discoloration is still there. Keep in mind that this is NOT safe mode.
Well, I thought it was a little weird that it successfully booted up that time, so I decided to try and restart the computer. Sure enough, it gave me the exact same bluescreen when I started it up. And then again and again. So, then I fully reinstalled windows once again after wiping my drive, re-downloaded Chrome, spent most of the day watching a wonderfully discolored rendition of Scrubs on Netflix and then came here. I can't turn off the computer or else I won't be able to boot it up again. I have a new graphics card on the way since I am almost positive that it's dead, but I figured I'd ask you guys anyways.
I understand that this story is terribly vague, and I'm not really looking for any perfect answers. I just want to know if this sounds like a dead video card based on what I told you guys.
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