Video card went out in middle of OS Restore...

[ckmckee]

Had to do a restore to factory condition on my HP Pavillion a810n desktop due to viruses. The system had loaded Windows files and was to the point of setting Windows up (I could hear the music start to play) when things froze and the the monitor screen went dark. I could still hear the music playing as if Windows was waiting for me to begin setting it up, but I could not see it because the screen was dark.

I checked that the cables & video card were well-seated, then I connected the problem pc up to another monitor and the screen was dark there also. It appears the video card has malfunctioned. I took video card out of pc, cleaned it with air, & noticed one side was so dirty not even air was removing the dust. Looks like the dust is so caked on it would need a thorough scrubbing, which can't be done. I reinstalled the video card in the PCI slot and booted pc again - the screen stayed dark.

My question is this: Will the computer be able to recognize the video card and install its drivers since I am in the middle of OS Recovery?? I need to be able to see the screen in order to finish the system recovery. Help!

 

[tigsounds]

Take the card out, get a bottle of 99% alcohol and an old toothbrush. Wet & scrub the board. Air-dry and try again. If it truly trashed as you think it is, no further harm will come to the board. This is not a particularly hazardous procedure even on a known good board.

Setup (recovery) may restart again from the last know good process it was working on when the failure occurred,
or it will start over again from the beginning.

 

[ckmckee]

Tigsounds, Thanks for your reply. I've called several drugstores and the strongest alcohol they have is 90%. They said they never heard of that. Are you certain it's 99% that I need?

I did take a soft, dry toothbrush and brush some of the dirt off the video card, put it back in the PCI slot, turned on the pc and it still does not work.

In the event I had to add a new video card, do you think it will function? I'm trying to figure out how the drivers will be found while the computer is in the middle of an OS recovery. Thanks again.

 

[tigsounds]

Tigsounds, Thanks for your reply. I've called several drugstores and the strongest alcohol they have is 90%. They said they never heard of that. Are you certain it's 99% that I need?

I did take a soft, dry toothbrush and brush some of the dirt off the video card, put it back in the PCI slot, turned on the pc and it still does not work.

In the event I had to add a new video card, do you think it will function? I'm trying to figure out how the drivers will be found while the computer is in the middle of an OS recovery. Thanks again.

Many years ago I lived in California for a few years and there was a grocery store named Safeway that had 99% alcohol. 90% will work good too. You're after the non-destructive solvent nature of alcohol. Petro-chemical solvents dissolve/melt too many things. The cheaper 70% just has a lot of water in it's mix and doesn't dry all that quickly but it too can be used.

The driver Windows installs is whatever setup finds and these days it probably won't find a driver at all since XP is so old now and so many new cards have come along. Install a new driver after XP is loaded/restored.

While the card is out, you may want to air-blast dust out of the socket of the MB to.

If setup has progressed to the point of restarting Windows and is making music on startup, try to start in safemode if possible. Open boot.ini and add these items to it..

/basevideo /sos

Start>Run>settings>Control Panel>System>Advanced>Startup & recovery>Settings>Edit


Your boot.ini will look something like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=alwaysoff /fastdetect /usepmtimer /basevideo /sos

You can remove the /basevideo /sos items after it is running and stable.
The /basevideo will force Windows to start in 640x480 video mode, no driver.
The /sos switch displays the device driver names while they are being loaded.

 

[ckmckee]

I cleaned the video card with 99% isopropyl alcohol, let it dry and put it back into the PCI slot (after I blew dust out of PCI slot). Started computer and the screen is still dark. I know how to restart pc in safe mode, however I can't see anything on the screen.

Meanwhile, I bought a replacement video card while I was out, however if I put it in computer I will be faced with the same thing - a dark screen. Is there any way around this?

 

[ckmckee]

Duh! I had the wrong keyboard and screen plugged in (from trouble shooting before). Disregard my last message. Now that I have the computer plugged into the correct keyboard and monitor, I booted up (with old video card installed). A message came up and said "setup is not fully installed. Please run setup again.".

So, I rebooted pc and pressed F10 - Recovery key (since I was in process of recovery not setup). The recovery is proceeding and I can see it on the screen.

At this point it appears that cleaning the old, dirty video card with 99% isopropyl alcohol did the trick. I'll keep you posted.

 

[ckmckee]

Update. I was able to view the recovery process on the monitor up until it finished loading, then the screen went dark. I can hear the music playing and believe I am at the stage where it wants me to put in my name, set the time, etc. but I cannot see anything on the monitor.

Guess it's time to put the new video card in, but I don't know what to do after that. Please tell me what should I do after I put the new video card in? Thanks for your help.

 

[tigsounds]

It's going too far for the video card to be toast.

Try to start in safe mode and edit the boot.ini file, or, delete your video card drivers....


Right-click an open areas of desktop, select Properties...

go to: Settings tab>Advanced>Adapter tab>Properties>Driver>Uninstall then re-boot.

if you truly believe the Video card is faulty, do the above and shut down and replace the card then.

If you can't get that far then shut down and replace the card with the new one, at least XP won't have drivers to load at startup for that one.

After new/old card is installed, get latest drivers and install, then DirectX 9c.

 

[ckmckee]

Tigsounds, It would be great if the old video card is still alive. Since it was an upgrade to the original generic video card that came with pc years ago, it makes sense that Windows does not have the driver for it. I look forward to trying your suggestions tomorrow. Thanks so much and I'll post a progress update tomorrow. Goodnight all!

 

[ckmckee]

Good morning. I started the pc in Safe Mode and chose the "VGA" mode. I could then see the Windows set up process where I chose region, time zone, etc. I was able to go to AMD's site to download video card drivers. Yes!

Question I have now is what happened when I did the recovery.
When Windows restarted for first time it had some software that came with it from the factory (internet sign up, Norton AV, Norton Firewall, & Norton Security Ctr, the pictures are still there (I expected it would be gone).

It appears a non destructive recovery was done which would have repair the OS yet kept the data? If this is correct then I wonder if the trojans that were on the pc before can still be on here now? Thanks very much.

 

[tigsounds]

It appears a non destructive recovery was done which would have repair the OS yet kept the data? If this is correct then I wonder if the trojans that were on the pc before can still be on here now? Thanks very much.

I was thinking you had a repair going on by the way it was crashing just at the point the desktop would have showed up, which is also where the video drivers kick-in. A repair would keep your present video driver broke or not. When you started in VGA mode, there are no drivers except the native 'get something on the screen' process. The change in the boot.ini adding /basevideo /sos would have blocked video drivers and showed all other drivers being loaded, much like safe mode does but still load Windows normally. So I think your problem is/was a broken video driver.

Go to control panel and uninstall your present video driver if you haven't already and install new ones.

Then, this is a good time to scan for trouble. Microsoft malicious software removal tool is a good place to start and then proceed with a real virus scan program, not McAfee. I use and like Kaspersky Anti-virus. The free ones out there are not useless, they just don't do a good enough job. McAfee is useless.

Microsoft® Windows® Malicious Software Removal Tool is HERE

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 Trial works for 30 days free. HERE

 

[ckmckee]

Tigsounds, Thanks for your help. I was able to back up data then had to do a Destructive Recovery due to instability of pc.

Windows did a LOT of updates and the pc was working fine with SP2. After I installed SP3 however it crashed and kept going in a loop (would continuously reboot). I uninstalled SP3 and turned off Windows updates, now the pc is fine.

I would like to install SP3 and wonder if you can tell me what I might do to achieve this? Thanks very much!

 

[tigsounds]

First, install a new 'Windows Installer' (Click HERE)

Download the full SP3 (Click HERE)


Update to SP3

 

[ckmckee]

Do you think I should post my previous question in another section?

 

[tigsounds]

Do you think I should post my previous question in another section?

I dunno... I'm not a moderator. They will make a new thread if they desire.

Other than that, hozit goin?? Newer 'installer' make a difference?

 

[ckmckee]

Ok, I just saw your suggestions about installing the Hotfix, then SP3. In process of doing this. Will post afterwards. Thanks very much for your help!

 

[ckmckee]

Installed the new windows installer Hotfix just fine (I think). Went to link for SP3 and it says ... "This installation package is intended for IT professionals and developers downloading and installing on multiple computers on a network. If you're updating just one computer, please visit Windows Update at http://update.microsoft.com ."

Okay, so when I try to do updates from Windows updates on my computer, it finds SP3 and next to the Install Updates button it says.....
"Download size (total): 0 KB *
Estimated time at your connection speed: 0 minutes *
(*Downloaded; ready to install) "

Any thoughts on this? In the meantime, I'll go to Microsoft's website and look for it there.

 

[ckmckee]

Just discovered I had Windows Updates turned "off" in Security center. Turned it on. Searching for updates again.

 

[ckmckee]

Nah, this did no good. SP3 update still came up with file size 0 KB. ugh!

 

[tigsounds]

"This installation package is intended for IT professionals and developers downloading and installing on multiple computers on a network. If you're updating just one computer, please visit Windows Update at...

Don't listen to the man behind the curtain. M$ is saving their bandwidth by steering people away from the full SP3 package. If you download the thing it should install just fine.

You don't need auto-updates on to do this. Auto-updates will try to install SP3 by direct-install from M$ and that seems to be how/where you have problems. Leave auto-updates off while you do this. Later when auto-updates is turned back on it will see you have SP3 and not try to do it again. You'll have the full SP3 package for later use this way too.

 

[ckmckee]

I ended up having to call Microsoft for this Service Pack installation issue. Turns out this problem occurs when a System Preparation (Sysprep) image is created on a computer that uses an Intel processor and is then deployed to a computer that does not use an Intel processor (my pc has an AMD processor).

Most computers include an image that the manufacturer created by using the Sysprep tool. Sysprep lets the computer manufacturer generate an image that can be used on different computers.

The problem that is mentioned in the "Symptoms" section may occur if the original Sysprep image for Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), for Windows XP SP2, or for Windows XP SP3 is created on a computer that uses an Intel processor and is then deployed on a computer that does not use an Intel processor.

In this configuration, the Intel processor driver (Intelppm.sys) may try to load after the computer is upgraded to Windows XP SP2 or to Windows XP SP3. The driver does this because an orphaned registry key remains from the original Sysprep image.

This is what we did to solve the problem (from: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953356 )...

1. Restart your computer in safe mode.

For more information about safe mode in Windows XP, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
315222 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315222/ ) A description of the Safe Mode Boot options in Windows XP
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Intelppm
4. In the right pane, right-click the Start entry, and then click Modify.
5. In the Value data box, type 4, and then click OK.
6. Exit Registry Editor.
7. Restart your computer.

Thank you Tigsounds for all your patience and help. Happy computing!

 

[ckmckee]

Best answer selected by ckmckee.