System, black screen, sound still working, then system resta

[raknarius]

Hi all, im baffled, perhaps somone can help me.
I have a old adm3000 1gb nforce mb etc i have a 6800 agp that came with this system and its been fine, reciently ill be playing one hour, maybe five hours, maybe only a few minutes and bam, i get black screen the light goes out on the monitor meaning no video signal, i still hear sound in the background then a moment later the system restarts.

i get a message video decive stop, blue screen etc. when the system comes back up and does its error reporting.

First thing i did was reinstall windows xp, updated bios, motherbard drivers, and nvidia drives for the card itself, it still continued.

So i bought a new ati x1600 512mb, wow it was alot nicer the bf2 was runing great but still get same crash, i know its not a tempature thing becuse somtimes i can play for 8 hours somtimes ten minutes its completely random.

So now i know its not my card since its doing the same thing with another card, also i play nwn and at the same time multi taske with multilple browsers open and mp3s going on etc and if i open too many windows or somthing bam i get the same thing same error message.

im out of ideas, i really wanted to wait for the 4x4 to upgrade but seems less i can find what this problem is i have to upgrade now.

Thanks in advance for all of you who help!

 

[CptCpu]

Have you checked what kind of PSU you have? ( As I type this the power goes out in my house- no lie) My UPS saved me. Sounds like the system boots ok and can run stable under light loads, but once you begin to increase the load and the demand for power it cuts. My advice is to check your power supply.

 

[raknarius]

well the power never goes out on the computer just the video does, also the video error message makes me thing its graphical on the error reporting, plus i put hte new ati in which you would think takes more power is agp pro 512 mb and it ran fine for two hours.

 

[ethel]

Yeah, I concur - the PSU is a definite candidate, and you can use it when you upgrade so you won't waste any cash. Although it doesn't completely fit what you're saying, it's also worth checking your memory with memtest86 - I once had some weird and seemingly random crashes that I eventually traced to a dodgy memory stick that had gone over time.

Anyway, if you have to upgrade it's a perfect time to with the new Core 2 Duo coming out - you can get one of those, or if you prefer AMD it's the perfect time too as A64 X2 processors are dirt cheap now - infact I'm jealous goddammit why won't my PC die on me??? That glass of water looks very precarious on my desk .....

 

[raknarius]

well i did a memory test and lol hours later the memory is fine. dam that memory test is detailed.

Do you guys really think its the power supply the computer never shuts off only the video goes and then it restarts, would the power supply being bad give me a error reporting of video error?

 

[CptCpu]

It could also does the ATI need extra power from the PSU through a cable or not?

 

[sexibwoy]

Yea, I know everyone's going in a different direction, but a few weeks ago i had a problem similar to that. water leaked out one of my tubes, onto my video card, and i didn't realize it. After I cleaned out the pc, and fixed the leak, the PC started up perfectly. Once in windows, everything looked o.k, but then the screen would go into the power save mode (looking for signal) I could hear my messages etc... I was able to reboot, everything seemed fine, then it would fail again, at random times. Problems' fixed now w/ a new video card.

 

[raknarius]

"it is most likley an interrupt problem can you force the video card to use a different irq than the audio device?"

How would i do that, that sounds like somthing it may very well be?

 

[raknarius]

how do i disable interupts in bios?

 

[uwisuwerme7]

I still think it's psu
Especially if it's a cheaper one or the original one from the case.

 

[Nerdhunter]

This has happened to me before back when I had AGP card. What I found out was that when I opened my computer (Which I rarely did back then) There was dust on the AGP slot which I thought meh. So I took it to a local computer fixing place. When I got it back they told me I fried my AGP slot and I had to get a new motherboard to use that card again. Well I said screw it and I got a PCI card ><. Anyways my point is, either your AGP slot is burnt or your PSU isn't supplying enough power.

 

[NaDa]

Yes my guess is that it's probably your PSU or the mobo.
If you want to check that your not getting any IRQ conflicts then go to BIOS and find the Update ESCD option then turn it on save and exit.
If that doesnt work try this.
Turn off, pull your card out then turn on (without your card in) and wait it will beep then in about 30sec turn it off put the card in start it again, thats it.
I have had trouble with these IRQs sometimes video card gets switched to a different IRQ and cant get unstuck.
Pulling it out and starting the PC got that fixed for me.