PC Hard Locking Whilst On Desktop Solid White Screen

[aron311]

Hi there got some problems with my pc hard locking on a solid white screen (sometimes blue or green) whilst doing basic tasks such as listening to music or whilst on the web.

It doesnt seem to happen during games.

I had some problems with the graphics card when I assembled the system, the HIS ATI HD3870 would give pixel errors whilst playing high end games, apparently this was due to the graphics card being slightly loose in the slot although I believed myself it was faulty, i havent seen that problem in a while though.

Any ideas as to what could be causing this would be great...

Specs are...

Intel E6750 @ 3.2Ghz stock volts since new
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 with latest bios.
Antec Neo HE 500W
ATI HD3870 stock bios and speed 8.5 Catalyst
Geil 2x 2GB kits 800mhz micron IC's at 4-4-4-12 rated 2.1v
3x Samsung 320GB Hd's (the new ones HD321LJ i think) RAID 0
Vista SP1 x64

System has been up and running without this problem for about 9 months on current set up.

My initial thoughts are this is something to do with the graphics card as everything is stock apart from CPU and the error seems to be video related, going to a white solid screen.

Also this graphics card clocks itself right back on the desktop to save power so that might explain why it doesnt occur whilst gaming.

Thanks very much,

 

[akhilles]

Download a small linux distro like Damn Small Linux, boot it up, play around for a few hours, try to reproduce the symptom. It could be software.