Gigabyte GA-945GCM-S2C - Video card problems

[Kaphius]

This is my general setup

Gigabyte GA-945GCM-S2C - Socket 775, Chipset Intel 945GC, FSB 1066Mhz, 2x DDRII 667Mhz Dual Channel, PCI-E 16x
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 a 2.00Ghz (Allendale) - Dual Core, S. 775, FSB 800Mhz, 1MB L2 Cache, XD Bit
MSI R3450 TD256H or NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT Video Card
4GB RAM DDR2 PC2-5300 667MHz
2 fans
3 HDD (1xIDE 2xSATA), 1 DVD-R Burner, card slot.
Windows XP Pro, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 10.04

Whenever I start the computer, the computer starts pinging that it does not find the video card, or that it is improperly inserted. I have two video cards, so I usually swap the cards whenever I try to move the card without success. Then the system starts, and sometimes it simply crashes, either booting, or whenever windows or ubuntu is about to finish loading. Ram is OK, as well as the other cards, of which I only have a regular modem attached to the PCI. Once I get it to work, it will be OK, even for several days, but whenever I turn it off, leave it for a day, and return, it starts with the same problem all over again.

I can mention that a few months ago, I lost my lcd screen, previous Nvidia card, my tv card, and a ram chip, to a freak electric incident with the power company. Could the motherboard be damaged? Is there any way to find out other than taking the system apart?

 

[Kaphius]

Oh, I almost forgot. I even had to change the power supply once.

 

[Kaphius]

OK, after much tinkering around, I did the following:

First I took out the USB pci card because the computer was giving me a 0x0000007E error at the USBHUB.SYS.

Next I swapped both ram chips due to a 0x000004F error, but nothing came of it.

Wel, maybe the usb hub card was the problem. I´ll let the system run for a week, and see what happens. Then I'll insert the Nvidia video card again to see if there is some incompatability error that might also be causing some problems.

 

[jaquith]

A lot of bizarre symptoms here crossing many OSs and possibly spanning across a bunch of peripherals.

My first instinct is to isolate HW, and clearly this is done by removing ALL nonessential components and picking one OS at a time. Also, my personal preference is to have one OS per HDD/SSD, but that is me; meaning I use the BIOS to select the OS and I have separate {profiles} BIOS settings for each OS.

Bare: CPU, MOBO, PSU, 1 GPU, KB/Mouse, 1 monitor, 1 stick DDR2.

Further, many OSs require different BIOS settings to run ideally and in many cases properly. Not to mention compatibility to attached HW (USB, GPU, etc).

That said, if the "bare system" is working then add one-by-one additional peripherals and "do" what it "took" to "break" the system. Otherwise w/o proper isolation it is impossible to find the 1 or many culprit(s). Run Memtest86+, ATTO, and PRIME95.

In addition, get an UPS (power strips often fail to protect)!!! Yeah, a malfunctioning PSU can destroy anything it's connected with a slow undefined death.