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General discussion

Video card problems! Damaged??

Mar 2, 2004 2:55AM PST

My display used to very unstable while scrolling windows up/down and dragging them around. I downloaded new drivers and this helped in that regard. Still, my mouse pointer, and any onscreen movement, for that matter, leaves behind small stray pixels of red and yellow, and you can forget about games; very unstable with those stray pixels filling the screen and all sorts of other instabilities (CRASH!). And even more lately, my screen freezes and my system crashes just doing mundane tasks. I've tried 3 different driver versions. I've reinstalled windows. My CPU temperature stays around 40

Discussion is locked

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Re:Video card problems! Damaged??
Mar 2, 2004 3:16AM PST

Regardless of case fans, remove the case cover and:

1. Make sure the video card cooling fan is working.
2. Leave the case cover off and point a fan at the machine.

Better or same?

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Re:Re:Video card problems! Damaged??
Mar 2, 2004 8:30AM PST

Yeah, it still happens. It happened immediately. I tried the fan trick to no avail. Here's the suspect file in the error message I got:

nv4_mini.sys F9FE1E2 base at F9F3700 Date sthnr 3Fb91de8

...I don't know what that means. This is puzzling the life out of me. What's my next step??

help,
Clint

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Re:Re:Re:Video card problems! Damaged??
Mar 2, 2004 8:42AM PST

You said a new mobo. How new? did this start when you went to it? Don't forget the latest BIOS thing. Dell references the nv4_mini.sys and .dll as possible conflicts with the bios causing blue screens. Perhaps the same with your mobo.

Try different video from another system to see if thats the culprit.

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Re:Re:Re:Re:Video card problems! Damaged??
Mar 2, 2004 9:36AM PST

Well, It began a few months after I built this machine last May or June. My old case used to run pretty warm. That may have damaged my video card. (Is that possible?) I have this new case with all these fans and a new 350W PSU, but it's progressively getting worse. I updated the BIOS for my Abit AT7-MAX2 motherboard, as suggested, but my mouse pointer still leaves these stray pixels and it'll crash if I ask to much of the video card (such as QuickTime video clips). I really don't have access to another video card and, as I said, there is no on-board video adapter.

Any more advice??

Clint

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Any other video card?
Mar 2, 2004 10:34AM PST

After I've booted to safe mode, removed the video card drivers and reinstalled the motherboard drivers, no-overclocking, and then the video card drivers, then I try another card.

Bob

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Re:Any other video card?
Mar 3, 2004 11:46PM PST

I've tried all that stuff, now. Some of it, numerous times- like a crazy person. I'll try to borrow an old video card from the compouter lab at my university. Is it ok to test with an old one that's not as powerful as the one I'm having problems with? Do you think it matters?

CLINT

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(NT) In short, try another one.
Mar 4, 2004 12:23AM PST

.

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Re:Video card problems! Damaged??
Mar 4, 2004 1:45AM PST

try a bigger power supply I recomened a 400 watt supply or bigger

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Re:Re:Video card problems! Damaged??
Mar 6, 2004 2:13PM PST

I got a new card and my video is working OK.