Wierd PC problem - Help please !!

paul2724

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Jul 24, 2009
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18,510
OK, this is fairly long so apologies, but its a really wierd one and I'm about tearing my hair out !

So my wife's PC started blue screening - most often (but not always) when running a heavy 3D app - and getting some wierd sort of pink fuzzy corruption around the screen (on the blue screen that is - also visible on the game screen or the desktop just before it happens). It started happening occasionally but now it happens within a few seconds of booting up a game and you can (at most) get away with half an hour or so of working on the desktop after boot before it happens. Its hard to catch the text on the blue screen due to the short time its up and the corruption but I did spot something about being unable to restart the video drivers.

Its a Core 2 Duo 6420, nice Asus motherboard, 4 Gigs (4x1Gb) of DDR800, XFX 8800GS GFX card, Tagan 500w PSU with plenty of power, 250 Gig Seagate Barracuda, dual screens, M$ Habu mouse, USB keyboard running Vista Home Premium - all updates / latest drivers installed.

I installed temperature monitoring stuff for MB, CPU and GFX card when I built the thing - she checks regularly while its running under full load - all running well within the zone (that 8800 runs hot but it's supposed to - always made me nervous tho).

First thought - fried GFX card - bought a new 9800 - same issue.

Second thought - RAM - tried running it with 2 of the RAM sticks - same issue, tried with the other 2 - same issue. (surely not all 4 got fried !)

Third thought - Motherboard - bought a new one - put it in - same issue.

Fourth thought - CPU(!?) - had a spare Core 2 8400 lying around for a PC build for a friend - put it in - same issue.

Fith thought - PSU - had a spare PSU lying around - put it in to test - same issue.

So at this point its practically a brand new PC !

The symptoms to me (GFX corruption and blue screen) seem to point to a hardware fault - but I'm now wondering if a reformat and reinstall is the way to go (bleh).

Anyone else had similar issues or got any ideas what might be causing this ? Help !!
 

paul2724

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Jul 24, 2009
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Can a dodgy DVI cable / monitor cause the PC it's connected to to fall over ? (if so that's news to me and would explain what's going on here !!)

thanks

Paul