Possible Graphics Card Prob :S

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Ok im lost >.<.

One of the guys in the office below mine has brought his pc to me asking my help to fix his 'not booting up' issue (his term lol).

According to what he told me he was in windows (xp home ewwwww) and his screen just froze, he rebooted his machine and itnow just has a black screen on it.

So i thought, ok hes screwed his o/s up somehow time to reinstall, perhaps buy new. Get his pc and im surprised that its not a bad build so thinking hes got some clue ask him about his kit. Turns out he has no clue about anything to do with pc's yet managed to self-build a not bad machine.

The machine has a single SATA hard drive, BFG Gforce 7800 GT OC graphics card, 2 sticks of 1gb ram and an A8N-SLI motherboard.

Now this is the confusing part, it will post happily, goes into bios, allows me to boot from cd i put a boot cd in to check, lets me load up partition manager from the boot disc and i can see the hard drive succesfully. Did a scan on it came up with loads of crosslinked files and errors (not sure if thats related to it being sata? as i have had no previous dealings with sata).

Tried to install a new copy of windws onto the same hard drive to do an in-windows chkdsk to try and correct them but when i boot from the xp cd (using pro cd) i get the ... setup is inspecting your hard drives configuration line then the screen goes blank.

Im a little confused, i think the graphics card might have a problem however im not really sure what it is since it shows post and the semi-gui interface of partition magic.

Anyone seen similar effects? or have any ideas that i might try.

( oh the baine of being the only 'IT' guy in the building.

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I'm a newb with IT but I would suggest you try removing the GFX card and using the on-board gfx to see if it works.

You could also try taking the ram out and give them a little clean using the rubber on the end of a pencil, this seems to have fixed some weird stuff in the past..

Hope this helps

 

I doubt it's the video card making the screen go black... the screen's going black cause the computer's locking up... might be a bad controller on the mobo, hard to tell for sure.

 

reconfiguring the machine to use on board vga output was my first thought as well, oddly enough it dosnt have one its SLI or nothing on this mobo.

As for a problem with the mobo, yeah its entirely possible. The guy who mad the pc is (for want of a better word) a newbie to IT.

 

Have you tested the PSU it could be a power problem

 

I would try by leaving only the necessary components in the motherboard. for example; leave one stick of ram, take the extra hard drives or cd/dvd roms that are not needed, sound card if there is one.

Just make sure that there is a video card, ram, hard drive, cd-rom drive. Only one unit of each and then try again.