Serious problem, please help

[Guest]

My specs:

Athlon XP 1500+
MSI GeForce3 Ti200 - Pro TD
ABiT KR7-A (no raid, no onboard sound)
512 MB DDR RAM
SB Live!
Maxtor 60 GB HD (7200 rpm)
NEC Floppydisc
Lite-on 24/40/10 CD R/RW
Dell 19'' monitor

My problem goes as follows:

After a little while now, usually 2-10 mins, my monitor goes *poof* to standby mode OR displays a serie of colored dots on the background and my computer hangs after which the monitor will go to standby mode after rebooting my computer.

After clearing CMOS and/or taking out/putting back in the graphics card this is usually resolved for another 2-10 mins... drives me nuts. I run Windows XP and it displays a 'serious error encountered with the graphics card, failed to draw... *etc.* this caused the system to become instable' (or similar).

I think I can narrow this down to the PSU (300W, too little?), faulty graphics card (or off course a conflict somewhere, it's not sharing it's IRQ with anything else) or a faulty AGP slot (?) / motherboard.

Wondering if anyone encountered anything similar to this... I plan on putting my old TNT2 Ultra into the new rig (which is at my students' hideout ) when I go back there later this week to see if that helps.

But anyway as I said, I was wondering if anyone here might have an idea to what is the problem here.

TIA

 

[matrix20109]

I had a similar problem to what you are experiencing myself a few months ago. My system is an Athlon 900 with an ATI Radeon card however. My monitor would randomly shut off or my computer would hang spuratically. What ended up fixing the problem for me was updating the driver for my card on ATI's website. They had a special patch for the problems I was having. If you haven't already, I would check for an updated driver on your card and if one is not available, then e-mail the manufacturer to see if they can help you. I have a 230W PS in my system, and I think a 300W would be sufficient.

 

[Guest]

I had a similar problem to this also. I was using an athlon 1.13 with a geforce2mx and it would randomnly hang in windows, or occasionally reboot. After rebooting it would either boot up normally, or the monitor would stay in standby and the bios would beep a couple of times. I replaced the motherboard because I thought the AGP port was dodgy. This didn't cure it, so i replaced the graphics card, and at the same time i hooked another psu up. I had 300w powering my drives etc... and 230w powering my motherboard. My system is now reliable, and about a week ago i disconnected the extra power supply, and so far so good. So i'm back to 300w powering the whole lot. No problems yet, touch wood. But the stange thing is, my old geforce works fine in my dads duron 750. So i dunno what the problem was.

 

[Guest]

Okay so it seems like the graphics card is most likely the cause of this mayhem

I will try putting my old graphics card in the new rig to see if that solves the problem...