Need help on my ati 4650 pls

[cherrydee]

hi so i have a 5yr old PC and last sunday night, my monitor suddenly flickers with purple/green shapes randomly and i also get the message "driver has stopped working and has been recovered successfully". there are also times my pc freezes for ~30sec or sometimes my monitor goes blank (blinking power on led).

so my initial response was to open my casing, replug my video card and make sure the screw is tight, turn on my pc and its fine again.

but last night, the problem went back again, this time replugging the video card didn't solved my problem. so what i did was uninstall my video card from device manager, the flicker went away so i restarted my PC to install a new updated driver. but now i was stuck at the windows 7 logo. took 15min to get to log on screen. and after typing my password i never reached the desktop. safe mode also stuck at log on part.

SORRY for the wall of text. got some questions:
1. when i uninstalled my driver and flicker went away does that mean the problem is with the driver? or the video card still might be at fault?
2. why am i stuck at windows logo and log on screen? is this the effect of a no-driver-video card? though i know it's not
3. ok so after 12hrs, i opened my pc again and voila, no flicker, fast rebooting, all seems perfect. so what do you guys think the problem is? overheat? vcard needs rest?

note: i play online games for atleast 10hrs a day (if no school/work).

bonus question: any recommended video card for $60?

 

[nyterage]

hi so i have a 5yr old PC and last sunday night, my monitor suddenly flickers with purple/green shapes randomly and i also get the message "driver has stopped working and has been recovered successfully". there are also times my pc freezes for ~30sec or sometimes my monitor goes blank (blinking power on led).

so my initial response was to open my casing, replug my video card and make sure the screw is tight, turn on my pc and its fine again.

but last night, the problem went back again, this time replugging the video card didn't solved my problem. so what i did was uninstall my video card from device manager, the flicker went away so i restarted my PC to install a new updated driver. but now i was stuck at the windows 7 logo. took 15min to get to log on screen. and after typing my password i never reached the desktop. safe mode also stuck at log on part.

SORRY for the wall of text. got some questions:
1. when i uninstalled my driver and flicker went away does that mean the problem is with the driver? or the video card still might be at fault?
2. why am i stuck at windows logo and log on screen? is this the effect of a no-driver-video card? though i know it's not
3. ok so after 12hrs, i opened my pc again and voila, no flicker, fast rebooting, all seems perfect. so what do you guys think the problem is? overheat? vcard needs rest?

note: i play online games for atleast 10hrs a day (if no school/work).

bonus question: any recommended video card for $60?

have you cleaned out the heat sink to make sure the card is not overheating? while you have the computer running stable, download a program where you can monitor temperatures of the video card, such as msi afterburner. watch the tempratures carefully, anything above 80c is bad. for a cheep card around $60, see if you can pick up a 4870 on ebay or craigslist, i myself recently sold a GTX 460 SSC+ on ebay, got $67 out of it so a 460 may also be a good option in your budget range, just make sure it is not one of the SE versions of the card, they are terrible compared to the inital 1gb 256bit version of the card.

 

[larkspur]

1) Flicker is usually the result of overheating or a bad card. Prior to the flickering had you updated drivers or changed something? I doubt your original flickering was a driver issue unless you had recently updated them.
2) Don't know - but uninstalling your card via the device manager probably wasn't the best thing to do. If you want to uninstall your drivers, then use the AMD catalyst install utility and select "uninstall". Then install whatever the AMD website suggests for your card.
3) Have you ever cleaned the dust out of the computer case and the heatsink fins on the GPU, CPU, motherboard, ram, etc? Always a good idea. Use a program like HWMonitor, CoreTemp, GPU-z to monitor your temperatures. But either way, make sure it isn't all dusty in there.

For $60 new I don't recommend anything. For $65 new: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102988

Or go used.

 

[cherrydee]

thanks for the replies. i have speedfan installed in my PC and according to it my GPU is at 70s when playing. also i have an external fan placed in front of my exposed casing to help air ventilation.

and no, i haven't touched the vcard driver for the past ~1yr. can't remember anything that could trigger the problem. my pc components are cleaned every month though i only clean the dust and webs and not thorough cleaning.

i still need to observe my PC. its running fine now but with random 2-3s freeze.

 

[nyterage]

thanks for the replies. i have speedfan installed in my PC and according to it my GPU is at 70s when playing. also i have an external fan placed in front of my exposed casing to help air ventilation.

and no, i haven't touched the vcard driver for the past ~1yr. can't remember anything that could trigger the problem. my pc components are cleaned every month though i only clean the dust and webs and not thorough cleaning.

i still need to observe my PC. its running fine now but with random 2-3s freeze.

as you mentioned in the first post, you updated the drivers for the video card and it caused windows to freeze after the login screen, were these the newest drivers from ATI?

 

[cherrydee]

i only did the update of driver after the first flickering encountered. prior to that, i haven't installed any software or updates.

new prob: encountered msg: bootmgr is corrupted and cannot reboot. i shutdown my pc, turned on. did this several times and finally able to use my pc again. *sigh* it's not limited to video card problem i guess.

 

[nyterage]

could you run disk check on the computer? (my computer, right click on the main drive, go to propertys, select tools and click error-checking) could be a corrupted sector of the hard drive that the graphics driver trys to write to every so often causing the crash.

 

[RussK1]

Newest drivers won't work for your card... what version of Windows 7 are you using - 32 or 64bit?

32bit drivers here~

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/legacy/Pages/legacy-radeonaiw-vista32.aspx

64bit drivers here~

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/legacy/Pages/legacy-radeonaiw-vista64.aspx

 

[cherrydee]

well my PC is working fine since my last reply here. i hope tomorrow i won't be getting anymore problems. btw i downloaded AMD driver updater. the software that checks if the vcard is updated or not then downloads it. i wonder why the software downloaded a driver dated 12-6 while browsing manually from AMD support website gave me 12-8 driver.

btw thank you

 

[RussK1]

well my PC is working fine since my last reply here. i hope tomorrow i won't be getting anymore problems. btw i downloaded AMD driver updater. the software that checks if the vcard is updated or not then downloads it. i wonder why the software downloaded a driver dated 12-6 while browsing manually from AMD support website gave me 12-8 driver.

btw thank you

12.6 drivers are the last to support 4000, 3000 and 2000 series cards and are considered legacy. 12.7 on, is for the 5000 series and up.

Hope it helped and good luck!