Crash Course
December 5, 2009 8:47 PM Subscribe
PC crash. How to progress from here?
It's a two year-old HP Pavilion m8327c running Vista. Had some FireFox crashes in the last few days. Today the display started flickering, the whites turning to vertical yellow lines, pixelated colors, etc. Ran System Restore and got up again for a while, then display started disintegrating again. Started in safe mode, but things seemed to get worse. Eventually even System Restore didn't work. Have run HijackThis and Adaware regularly, and NOD32 is up to date. Never had problems with viruses. Computer is very dusty; I plan to blow it out tomorrow. Unplugged now, and I'm working from my old computer.
What is the most likely cause? What is the best way to proceed from here? My son has a pretty rad computer we can use to transfer files, etc. TIA.
It's a two year-old HP Pavilion m8327c running Vista. Had some FireFox crashes in the last few days. Today the display started flickering, the whites turning to vertical yellow lines, pixelated colors, etc. Ran System Restore and got up again for a while, then display started disintegrating again. Started in safe mode, but things seemed to get worse. Eventually even System Restore didn't work. Have run HijackThis and Adaware regularly, and NOD32 is up to date. Never had problems with viruses. Computer is very dusty; I plan to blow it out tomorrow. Unplugged now, and I'm working from my old computer.
What is the most likely cause? What is the best way to proceed from here? My son has a pretty rad computer we can use to transfer files, etc. TIA.
Response by poster: It's possible, pjern. I'll open it up tomorrow and have a look.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:04 PM on December 5, 2009
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:04 PM on December 5, 2009
From a computer support forum concerning a similar problem:
"What is happening to your laptop is the power line connecting a row of pixels is failing so only partial colors are showing up causing the yellow streak. I have seen them 1 pixel wide like in my toshiba laptop and i've seen them 8 or 10 pixels wide in a Dell laptop. Usualy screen replacement is the only answer to fix it."
posted by Spurious at 9:20 PM on December 5, 2009
"What is happening to your laptop is the power line connecting a row of pixels is failing so only partial colors are showing up causing the yellow streak. I have seen them 1 pixel wide like in my toshiba laptop and i've seen them 8 or 10 pixels wide in a Dell laptop. Usualy screen replacement is the only answer to fix it."
posted by Spurious at 9:20 PM on December 5, 2009
I was about to say some sort of video issue. Either the drivers somehow got corrupt, or the physical card is failing. Boot into Safe Mode (Hit F8 as your computer is booting up, and choose Safe Mode with Networking from the menu) and see how the video holds up. If it stays up there, I'm leaning more toward a driver issue, and you can open up your browser of choice, download and install new drivers. If it still acts wonky, I'm more leaning to a physical card failure, and that will either take you replacing the card, or taking the card to someone else. As pjern said, do make sure the card is free of dust and that all fans are working as well.
posted by deezil at 9:20 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by deezil at 9:20 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]
Definitely clean out the dust--that could have you back up and running really quickly. Even if your video card or some other vital chip is seriously damaged, your hard drive is probably fine (have you heard anything unusual from it recently?), so you should be able to recover your data with your son's machine. The safest possible way to play it would be to remove the drive, put it in your son's computer, and run a backup right now.
posted by tellumo at 9:22 PM on December 5, 2009
posted by tellumo at 9:22 PM on December 5, 2009
The flickering is probably not related to the Firefox crashes.
This is a long shot, but before anything else would be worth taking a minute to unplug the video cable (on both ends if it has two), make sure the connectors are clean, and then plug it in again firmly and carefully. I've seen that work before.
posted by dacoit at 10:20 PM on December 5, 2009
This is a long shot, but before anything else would be worth taking a minute to unplug the video cable (on both ends if it has two), make sure the connectors are clean, and then plug it in again firmly and carefully. I've seen that work before.
posted by dacoit at 10:20 PM on December 5, 2009
Get a backup of your data before doing anything else!
posted by gregr at 10:58 PM on December 5, 2009
posted by gregr at 10:58 PM on December 5, 2009
Given what Spurious noted, you might also check whether you have the same video problems if you hook up a different monitor.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:00 PM on December 5, 2009
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:00 PM on December 5, 2009
I had this same problem twelve months ago on my PC. Turned out to be the power supply giving up the ghost.
posted by Duke999R at 11:04 PM on December 5, 2009
posted by Duke999R at 11:04 PM on December 5, 2009
If it's dusty, the video card might well be overheating. If it starts out good and you get special effects after a few minutes' running, that's almost certainly what's going on.
posted by flabdablet at 2:03 AM on December 6, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 2:03 AM on December 6, 2009 [1 favorite]
My money would be on the video card fan getting stuck, it happened to me a couple of times with similar symptoms.
posted by malevolent at 3:08 AM on December 6, 2009
posted by malevolent at 3:08 AM on December 6, 2009
As it doesn't seem to be driver related (you tell us it seemed to get worse in safe mode), a hardware problem is the likely cause. I'd guess Duke999R's suggestion is right, but only because I've had similar experiences. If your son's happy with the idea, you could try swapping out likely culprits. If his machine has the same type of video card (PCIe, I believe), you could start there and if there's no luck, try the power supply. Make sure you son's machine has a power supply with at least as many watts though.
You should be able to pick up a replacement video card quite cheaply, but a decent power supply will cost a bit.
posted by GeckoDundee at 4:51 AM on December 6, 2009
You should be able to pick up a replacement video card quite cheaply, but a decent power supply will cost a bit.
posted by GeckoDundee at 4:51 AM on December 6, 2009
Response by poster: Blew the dust out--it was filthy in there. Ran fine for five minutes or so. I was just ready to hit post with an "all fixed" comment when it started again. Good comments here--I'm working through your remedies.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:36 AM on December 6, 2009
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:36 AM on December 6, 2009
Response by poster: Just ran a CPU and Memory test, as well as Basic Test. All passed.
But when running StartRep.exe there was an Application Error:
"The instruction at 0x745d060a referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be read" Does that indicate anything specific?
I'm still getting vertical yellow bars and pixelated yellow areas. Also very pretty abstract triangles, skewed spikey shapes, and foreshortened rectangles of my background, text boxes etc.
Similar problems in safe mode.
It says the driver for my Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS is up to date. Maybe I fried the video card. Still working on it...
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:13 PM on December 6, 2009
But when running StartRep.exe there was an Application Error:
"The instruction at 0x745d060a referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be read" Does that indicate anything specific?
I'm still getting vertical yellow bars and pixelated yellow areas. Also very pretty abstract triangles, skewed spikey shapes, and foreshortened rectangles of my background, text boxes etc.
Similar problems in safe mode.
It says the driver for my Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS is up to date. Maybe I fried the video card. Still working on it...
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:13 PM on December 6, 2009
After blowing the dust out, were you actually able to see the upstream edges of all the video card's cooling fins? And are you absolutely certain that the video card's fan actually works? They do jam sometimes. I've fixed several video cards by peeling off the sticker that covers the fan bearing and putting a tiny tiny droplet of TriFlow in there before sticking it back down.
posted by flabdablet at 9:04 PM on December 6, 2009
posted by flabdablet at 9:04 PM on December 6, 2009
Response by poster: All three large fans are turning smoothly, plus the little one on the video card. Looks quite clean inside now.
It appears I was wrong about Safe Mode, however. Video seems to hold up fine. So it might be a software or virus issue. It says my driver is up to date. Still puzzled.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:18 PM on December 7, 2009
It appears I was wrong about Safe Mode, however. Video seems to hold up fine. So it might be a software or virus issue. It says my driver is up to date. Still puzzled.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:18 PM on December 7, 2009
If you think it's driver related, download the latest driver for your card, then (in safe mode) run driver cleaner pro to remove all traces of the old driver. Reboot in safe mode and install the new driver.
However, your latest symptoms do sound like hardware problems (I'd now be inclined to say the memory on your video card). I'd suggest swapping your son's card for yours and playing a modern game or running something similarly taxing on the card. If you don't want to use his card, you should be able to get a cheap PCIe card (I can get a decent one here in Australia for under $35). Even if that turns out not to be the problem, you'll have a video card to use should a similar situation arise.
posted by GeckoDundee at 3:39 PM on December 7, 2009
However, your latest symptoms do sound like hardware problems (I'd now be inclined to say the memory on your video card). I'd suggest swapping your son's card for yours and playing a modern game or running something similarly taxing on the card. If you don't want to use his card, you should be able to get a cheap PCIe card (I can get a decent one here in Australia for under $35). Even if that turns out not to be the problem, you'll have a video card to use should a similar situation arise.
posted by GeckoDundee at 3:39 PM on December 7, 2009
Response by poster: Video card was fried.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:30 PM on December 9, 2009
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:30 PM on December 9, 2009
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posted by pjern at 8:55 PM on December 5, 2009 [1 favorite]