Last year about this time I built a system with an AMD Athlon 1.2 GHz processor, an ECS K7S5A motherboard, 256M DDR RAM, a Gainward GeForce 2 Pro/Golden Sample video card, a Plextor CD/RW, and Windows XP Home. I am a very minimalist user, mainly running an old DOS daily planner/financial manager (Andrew Tobias' Managing Your Money 9.0, for old-timers) and doing a little bit of web browsing and word processing. I mainly built this system to enable my kids to enjoy some of the current game offerings that would not run on my OLD system (100 MHz Pentium).
Most recent problem: whenever I attempt to web browse, I experience, within ten minutes or so (I use Juno's paid service for an ISP.), the first symptom, which is that a mouse click does nothing. This is followed eventually be slowdown and eventual freezeup which can only be corrected by rebooting. I suspect my video card, since I recently had similar problems with it when the video card processor fan came unseated and elicited similar symptoms. I have checked the fan, and it is securely fastened now. Is it possible the video processor was damaged during the fan's season of detachment? My next step is to substitute the video card out of my old computer and see if it solves my freeze-up problems when browsing. If this is my problem, this card is only about a year old. Any possibilities of warranty solutions? If not, can anyone recommend a cheap but decent card? I'd be looking in the $100 or less price range.
Most recent problem: whenever I attempt to web browse, I experience, within ten minutes or so (I use Juno's paid service for an ISP.), the first symptom, which is that a mouse click does nothing. This is followed eventually be slowdown and eventual freezeup which can only be corrected by rebooting. I suspect my video card, since I recently had similar problems with it when the video card processor fan came unseated and elicited similar symptoms. I have checked the fan, and it is securely fastened now. Is it possible the video processor was damaged during the fan's season of detachment? My next step is to substitute the video card out of my old computer and see if it solves my freeze-up problems when browsing. If this is my problem, this card is only about a year old. Any possibilities of warranty solutions? If not, can anyone recommend a cheap but decent card? I'd be looking in the $100 or less price range.