Computer Lines

May 14, 2006 11:50 AM

Why does my computer keep doing this? Moving around an open window does this. The purple lines usually pop out of nowhere, independent of what I'm doing. It started this week and has been happening more often as time goes on. Restarting the computer seems to be the only cure.
posted by lotsofno to computers & internet (17 answers total)

Could be a loose video cable or video card crapping out (try a driver update).
posted by bitdamaged at 11:53 AM on May 14, 2006

As a guess, failing memory on the video card. But that's a guess. It could very well be drivers, but the symptoms of "Started last week, getting worse now", points mostly to hardware.

If it's a fancy new video card with lots of game-fu and a huge fan, make sure the huge fan is still working -- overheating could produce just those symptoms, and if it is the fan, the card might die.
posted by eriko at 11:57 AM on May 14, 2006

Your video card is crapping out - It's only going to get worse.
posted by SweetJesus at 12:00 PM on May 14, 2006

i've been using a woeful Sapphire Radeon 9500 Pro for over a year now, so maybe it's about time i bought something new. Someone told me it might be "broken RAM," so I'm hesitant to drop the cash for one before figuring out just what's causing it.

I don't think it's overheating, as I stuck my hand by one of my shuttle's vents and it seems quite cool. I will try getting new drivers and checking the cables.
posted by lotsofno at 12:04 PM on May 14, 2006

Is this a screenshot or a picture of the screen? If a picture of the screen, does a screenshot look any different?
posted by neustile at 12:08 PM on May 14, 2006

it's a screenshot, but it looks a little different than the printscreen i did. everything looks normal in between the darker purple bars, instead of having the light purple/green bars. so it looks like approximately 100 pixels of a purple vertical lines, 100 pixels of normal screen, then another 100 pixels of purple vertical lines, etc..
posted by lotsofno at 12:18 PM on May 14, 2006

You woudln't be able to tell by sticking your hand in front of an external vent. Open it up and see if the fan is moving.
posted by awesomebrad at 12:20 PM on May 14, 2006

Something's happened to your Green channel. Notice that the Red and Blue are normal.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:21 PM on May 14, 2006

So, my first thought was "loose video cable" then I realized as probably did neustile "Wait a minute... if it was the cable or monitor then it wouldn't be captured in a screenshot." So, I'm leaning more toward an incompatible or corrupted driver.

How do you get it back to normal?
posted by smallerdemon at 12:31 PM on May 14, 2006

How do you get it back to normal?

I restart the computer. Logging out and back in doesn't work. I'm gonna try to get some more recent drivers and open up the shuttle case to make sure everything's pushed in properly. if the problem persists, i'll get a new video card from somewhere with a generous return policy, just in case that doesn't fix the problem.
posted by lotsofno at 12:52 PM on May 14, 2006

If it were driver problems, it wouldn't just suddently start to happen after working well for a long time. I too suspect bad memory problems, perhaps brought on by a blocked/stopped fan, either on the video card, or in the computer. (Especially if you've got one of the shuttle SFF machines, which can run very hot and have just a small amount of airflow-

Leave the case off, turn the computer on, and verify the operation of all of the fans. Even if you get a new card which works, you could still be cooking it (and your processor) if the case fans have stopped working-
posted by bemis at 12:57 PM on May 14, 2006

If you really want to save money you might be able to get more life out of it by underclocking the RAM (and maybe the GPU) and seeing if that helps. Google for an app called Powerstrip. Turn everything down by 20% or more.

This assumes updating the drivers doesnt fix anything and you couldn't care less about 3D performance.
posted by skallas at 1:14 PM on May 14, 2006

If doing a screen capture results in an image displaying the anomaly and rebooting temporarily fixes the problem then that almost certainly indicates failing hardware of some kind.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:17 PM on May 14, 2006

One of our computers was doing that a few days ago. I replaced the video card with another video card and the display is fine. The video card that produced the lines on the display had a malfunctioning fan, so I wasn't suprised that the video card failed. Once I replaced the card, the display was fine and the lines were gone.
posted by aliksd at 4:02 PM on May 14, 2006

Sometimes fans seize up (specially the el cheapo bushed-bearing fans you find on el cheapo graphics cards). If that's happened to your graphics card, then all the heat would be staying on the card instead of escaping through your vents. So the only way to tell is actually opening the case and feeling the graphics card.
posted by flabdablet at 4:41 PM on May 14, 2006

If screen capture does capture the wierd colors, it can ONLY be a software/driver issue (if it was hardware, windows wouldn't be able to tell something was screwing up)

If you try a screen capture, and everything is alright, it's something hardware. Looking at the colors, combined with the *verticle* lines, I'd say it's NOT the cable, but probably a chip on the card, either the GPU or the memory.

if (A) download new drivers, if that doesn't work, no choice but to (B) get a new Video card.
posted by hatsix at 9:34 PM on May 14, 2006

If screen capture does capture the wierd colors, it can ONLY be a software/driver issue

Not true at all. If overheating was causing the graphics card's frame buffer memory to become corrupted (e.g. a misbehaiving hardware bitblt routine) then a screen capture would exactly capture that corruption.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:15 PM on May 14, 2006