What to do, when you think the grafikcard is out of order.

[plueschinger]

Hello,
like the title told, I thing my grafikcard is somehow not in order.
It happened suddenly,
the effects on the left side of the monitor there are stripes and sometimes crosses,
in some cases the left side is ony darker,

For the moment I found a solution, beating the computer or pushing(moving) the cable to the monitor.
Not really funny,

Sometimes I have violet effects with the letters, but the rest is o.k,
Sometimes everything works fine.
Sometimes nearly everything works fine, but there are some pixels on the desktop picture wrong.

Do You have any ideas?
Is it the grafikcard or something different or do I have only to open the computer and clean it and check all the contacts?

Thanks for every hint.

Regards
Plueschinger

[hurleybird]

Any of the problems you fixed through moving the monitor cables did not originate from the graphics card. Try a different monitor or a different cable.

[light_gemini]

Once on one of my past computers I found that after years of the monitor cable being in a bended position, nearly 90 degrees, I started having problems like black outsm, pink halos near the corners, etc. The cable was useless,but the monitor was useless also. Dont know who broke what but making sure your cables follow a smooth and straight way surely is nice for theur health.

[klauss]

Sometimes nearly everything works fine, but there are some pixels on the desktop picture wrong.

That could be memory or GPU overheating.
nVidia cards handle overheating very very graciously, but ATI ones don't. When ATI cards overheat, they do that kind of stuff before hanging.
Make sure it's not that.
But, whatever got fixed by moving monitor cables, again, is not related to the card itself.

Do check contacts. It's a safe thing to do.
You might also try cleaning the contacts, I usually use alcohol, but I'm not sure that's always safe (electrically it is, since it evaporates so quickly - chemically... I dunno, I always am very careful not to touch the painted zones, that green/orange thing over most paths).

But... if moving the monitor helped, it's a safe bet that the contacts you'd have to check are inside the monitor rather than the CPU. It's possible, I'd do it if it were me, but disassembling (and reassembling) the monitor is a bit more delicate (you could do it if you're careful - just be careful with what you touch, even off monitors may be dangerous, they store quite a punch).

[GAlex]

try kicking your monitor more violently

... and if it doesn't work kick hard your pc.

maybe it doesn't help solving the problem, but it's soooo relaxing
and of course if you end broking permanently something it's the right time to buy something new.

anyway in my office when something doesn't work, first we kick and punch it, then we try turning it off and on, then... we call our help desk:
standard H.D. dialog:
Technician: What's the matter with it again?
I: well, it doesn't work, again.
T: have you tried moving something, cable, connections...?
I: Oh Yeah .
T: have you tried turing it off and on?
I: (stressed)yes.
T: ok, i will come and change it, again.
I: again

[plueschinger]

Hello

Thanks for your tips.

@hurleybird
The monitor is old, and you can only remove the power cable,
but it works now perfect on my old 350megaherz pentium 2 computer with a linux 2.4.17 kernel,
I borrow tomorrow a monitor from my neighbours just to test it.

@light_gemeni
The cable is bended, but I can't change it, because it's fixed to the monitor,
only solution is cutting it, but that makes it only worse, I think.

@klauss
First I didn't wanted to open the computer, but then I saw he has no more garanty
from the fabric, then I did it, what I saw was a big plastic tube around the ventilator
of the processor, to avoid dust, good idea for the dust inside the tube, but the dust outside was falling directly on the grafikcard, so I tried to clean it first with a vacuum-cleaner, then with a pinsel to draw pictures.
The computer worked 5 minutes o.k., then the old story, the left half was weired.
So I start to believe in the overheating idea, it is ATI-card.

The next thing, I played around with the Bios until I activated "halt on all errors"
Then I even couldn't start the Bios.I removed the CMOS-batterie, waited half an hour, inserted it again and everything was fine for 10 minutes.
Then the same old story.

@GAlex
I will kick the computer, my mood is already quit bad.

So tomorrow, I try it with an other monitor, then I remove
the card from the computer and clean it, and install it again, then I exchange the 2 ram-Memories from left to right and right to left and play around with the Bios.

So I think I need a couple of days to get this problem fixed.

Really irritated.
Regards
Plueschinger

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

You want my tip???

That's my remedy.

[sunergos]

for the sound of it, you have a bad vga cable on the monitor, BUT

older agp cards can experience a rather common problem where they start to back out of the slot. About the time processors hit the one gig mark, manufacturers were using a clip of some sort on the agp slot to keep the front end (the end furthest from the opening in the back of the case where you plug the cable in) from working out. I've seen this cause any number of strange problems, and by moving the cable you would be changing the contact area for the card, which might improve the picture. if that's it, taking the card out and re-seating it should solve the problem. Might be worth a shot.

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

I still think my remedy is better

[micheal_andreas_stahl]

[plueschinger]

Hello

I removed the gafik-card from the computer and reinstalled it. It works o.k for five minutes, then the old problems. I tried several monitors, so it can't be the monitor.

But now I don't know if I buy a new grafik-card ( between 35 dollars - 300 dollars)
or a new cheap computer ( around 199 dollars), or if I wait until I get a computer as a present ( for example for christmist ) ?

Sorry I have some computer-problems, and until i didn't solved them I can't be so often in this forum.

By the way my old Computer loads the sides in this forum much faster than my Computer, which has to be repaired( Kernel-2.4.17 against Kernel-2.6.15) (Redhat-9 against Fedora-5).

Regards
Plueschinger

[klauss]

It seems to me either GPU or memory is overheating, or the memory got busted. Any of thouse could have responded like that.

Dirty contacts too, believe it or not.
One of my pro audio cards, the ADAT interface card, was kind of busted in that it didn't fit well into the PCI slot. Or, rather, it did fit well, but somehow had intermittent contact. Simple fix: I manufactured a paper roll that I put making pressure between that card and an adjacent one, holding it inplace.

You might want to try something like that, but you'd have to figure out which "posture" makes it work. In my case, it was rather easy since the faulty contacts dropped samples, and so I just kept monitoring the input until there weren't any more dropped samples. But with a graphic card... that may be a lot harder.

Bare in mind that if contacts were to blame, your motherboard may be affected as well. Maybe it's not the graphics card, but the slot.

So... if you need a replacement, I'd recommend a cheap card until you can replace the motherboard too (or assert its good working order).

[mkruer]

• If you are going to keep your system for a long time > 1.5yrs
  • If you can wait > .25yrs
    • If you can find APG versions.
      I would wait for the DirectX 10 card like the Nvidia 8000 series, and the yet to be released ATI cards,
  Else If you are going to get a new system sooner < 1.5yrs
  • By some cheap < 100 card to get you by
  End If

[plueschinger]

Hello
@mkruer + Klauss
Now I'm using my newer computer again.
But as soon as possible I will sell this machine. It was too cheap.
The first day I bought it, I started, it made "boom", the electrical transformer crashed directly, they gave me a new computer, this one, now two years later, this silly problems.

I started to make my own pressure experiments, soon I will add a photo.
It works quiet well until now, I thought I could make perhaps money with my invention:
"The gafik-card stabilisator".

I use two hulls for old music cassettes(tapes), one horizontal, the other one high on it
and an empty packet of cigarette papers to get the optimal pressure.
The only problem I have to correct it, if the computer goes hotter.

Soon I start a thread, "how to make a good, cheap computer from a barebone"

By the way, after I my experiments with the Bios, I had to remove and insert the Cmos-Batterie again,
the Internet is much faster.

Regards
Plueschinger