Really strange problem....

[zaarin_2003]

Hi,

I recently purchased a Sapphire 6850 Toxic to replace my Sapphire 4850 and, without checking the power supply requirements like a fool, unfortunately appear to have purchased something too powerful for my 450w powersupply. The Sapphire website confirms that 500w is required.

Anyway, before I realised this I installed the card. Upon reboot, Windows (7 x64 edition) ran very slowly. I installed the updated drivers ok, but after restarting, I experienced crashes and Windows would revert to the boring looking plain colourscheme. Also, AVG Antivirus 2011 suddenly had a problem with the Firewall. It was 'stopped' and restarting it resulted in an error message. Reinstalling AVG did not solve the issue. After the PC failed to load Windows (it appeared that the PC had lost the HD, no doubt due to it not receiving enough power), I decided to replace the card with my original 4850. Uninstalled the new drivers completely (using CCleaner to remove the last traces) and reinstalled the 4850 drivers from the ATI website.

The strange thing is, that although I no longer receive crashes, and the computer runs 'fine'... sort of... there are still issues.

The colour scheme problem remains. It loads up in the drab Windows Basic colour, only changing to the normal transparent one after about 10 minutes. In addition, a new problem has arisen. My Wifi connection is off when I start the computer and I need to run the network troubleshooter to fix it. Fix it it does, but it is still annoying, reporting that the Windows Wireless Connection was off. Also, AVG seems worse than ever. Now most of its databases and protections and such are disabled and won't turn on. Otherwise the computer runs fine.

Does anyone have any ideas? Maybe one of the crashes when I was trying to run Windows with the new card corrupted some files? I did need to run the Start Up diagnostic program one time, which took an hour. Are there any programs to check system files?

Thanks very much!

Matt Franks

 

[phos]

An easy solution would be to do a clean install of win7 after you installed your new card, since it seems that it isn't just one thing that became messed up. I would definetly recommend it. Also check the motherboard for anything that might have been loseend by accident. On top of my head I would say it's the ram.

 

[DXRick]

It's odd that the new video card caused all that. Your 450W PSU should have been enough to power the card, until you ran some game (or other 3D app) that caused the card to start sucking more power. On the other hand, if it was the PSU, then it must be a poor quality one, and it's possible that it was damaged when it tried to put out more power than it could. It's also possible that it could have caused damage to another component, like the motherboard or hard drive. All PC components require stable power, and PSU problems can damage them.

You can run Memtest and Checkdisk (setting it check for bad sectors so it runs on a reboot) now, since they run on startup before Windows loads. It would be better to get any HD diagnostic software provided by the manufacturer of that HD.

You can also reset your BIOS to see if it got corrupted somehow, by removing and reinserting the motherboard battery. Then, go into the BIOS on the first bootup to check everything, including RAM timings.

If the above stuff works, it could still be the PSU or the system files on the HD got mangled. You could try to repair windows or wipe the HD and do a clean install.

 

[zaarin_2003]

Hi, thanks for the reply. Things have improved. I managed to get AVG working but other things seem erratic. I can confirm the psu is very cheap, and I did manage to get a game working with the new card before it started going weird. It's odd little things... Like the system clock was wrong in Windows and Media Centre appeared for the first time ever. I'm loath to do a clean install on Windows. I only did one just before Xmas! I suspect you're right that the cheap psu corrupted some files when it tried to draw full power. I'll try memtest etc, thanks. How do you check for corrupted or missing system files? I'm sure there was something like that for XP.

Thanks again
Matt