controlsnut

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May 25, 2009
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Hello All!

I put together a new desktop a few weeks ago, and dual booted windows XP professional and 64 bit ubuntu. All went well, and after a couple days I restarted my computer and attempted to boot to windows and it failed at the splash screen. I did a system restore, and it booted correctly. I've had to do this several times in the past few weeks ( I don't turn my computer off often ) but now the system restore isn't doing the trick AND it won't boot to Ubuntu (also fails at splash screen), which is really weird. Here are the system specs:

MB: Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 5600
Video Card: XFX GeForce 9400 GT
Memory: G. Skill DDR2-1066 (2GB x 2)
HD1: Western Digital 320GB SATA2
HD2: MAXTOR 80GB IDE Hard drive (I think)

I've tried flashing a new bios, but nothing seems to work this time around. Any suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks!

Nick

 

controlsnut

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May 25, 2009
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Okay, Different Question:

Will state that problem is either video card or ram, here is why I think so:

The video card my be a problem because neither the bios splash or windows splash look right (Bios has pixels incorrect color, Windows splash has vertical, dashed blue lines through it) computer freezes at windows splash. Linux attempts to boot, but all I get are strange colored boxes rather than login). I can boot into safe mode, video drivers have worked in the past and have not been updated since.

The ram may be a problem because it is DDR2-1066, but the MB only supports DDR2-1066 for AM2+ socket type processors, and I have an AM2 socket processor.

Could anyone provide guidance as to which is the most likely cause of the failure? I would prefer not to guess and spend more money on a video card or ram and not have it fix the problem.

Thanks!

Nick
 

dokk2

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Jul 1, 2007
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Agreed it looks like a hardware problem you can download memtest and run it on single and dual mode,,and if you bought your video card,etc,, locally you can take it/ them back for testing..
I do not think that the ram could be a problem as the system will run it at the required state???,again you should be able to return them for a replacement.
You do not mention your psu ,I should think that you have at least a good 450/500watt psu..Without external testing it is didfficult to draw any further conclusions/suggestions..:)
 

controlsnut

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May 25, 2009
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Thanks for the reply,

I'm about 95% sure it's the video card now. After booting into safemode and uninstalling the VGA drivers, windows would boot (although the video problems on the splash screens were still there). I booted into the linux recovery and selected "try and fix vga driver issues" and then it booted into linux as well, although there were still weird video artifacts. I'm going to borrow a friends video card and test to see if I still have the same problems.

edit:

Oh yeah, I have a 600W rosewill psu.