Broken video card?

InvisiBill

InvisiBill

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 2, 2003
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I was troubleshooting a coworker's PC today. He just bought a SATA drive to add, and couldn't get it to boot with the new drive. He brought the drive in a few days ago, and I was able to see it in my system with no problems at all. Today he brought the whole PC in for me to look at.

Athlon 64 3500+ (I think - something like that)
MSI K8 Neo4 Platinum 1.0 (S939)
Maxtor IDE drive with existing WinXP install
New WD SATA drive added in
2x IDE optical drives
New Thermaltake 500W (550W?) PSU
eVGA 6800GS

It would POST and start to boot into Windows. At the point where it would change from "DOS mode" to "Windows mode", the system would just stop. Screen was black and Caps Lock wouldn't change the keyboard LEDs. The only option was to power cycle it. It did this on a normal boot, in Safe Mode, and even with a BartPE CD. Since it failed exactly the same way even with a LiveCD, that pretty much eliminated the OS install as the culprit, and we turned to hardware issues.

We eventually swapped in another video card. The only PCIe card we had sitting around was a low-profile OEM part out of an older Dell USFF. Pulled the bracket off the card so it would fit in his case, and the thing booted right up to his login screen (and to BartPE as well). Swapped back to the 6800GS and it returned to the exact same failure halfway through booting. Apparently the new drive was just coincidental timing.

I've never seen it before where the card seems to work perfectly in "DOS mode", but completely freezes the system as soon as Windows starts. At that one point, it just seemed to jump from one end of the spectrum to the other.

Anyone else seen this before?
 
I couldn't remember if it was Tt that I had read about being way overrated...

nV News Preview said:
The maximum power draw of the GeForce 6800 GS is 75W. A 350W power supply is recommended for systems with a single card and at least a 420W power supply for systems with an SLI configuration (two cards).
Click to expand...

It seems like even a crappy 500W should be able to handle something that lists a 350W as a requirement. That's only 70% of the PSU's rating. We did unplug some parts (don't remember exactly which combinations), with no change.
 
Ok, you said that you already tried to unplug SOME parts, and it didn't help. Try to unplug everything extra, both optical drives, that new HHD, and even the sound card if you forgot to mention it. Remove any peripherals also. Try with both video cards cards again, and if it stills refuses to reach windows with the 6800GS, then it MIGHT be your video card.

I had a very similar problem a few months ago, where it wouldn't reach windows. It would just gave me a black screen. What I did was go into safe mode, and wiped and reinstalled the video card drivers. That surely solved the problem for a few months, but then the video-card died for real a few days ago. You can check my story HERE, because it sounds very similar to mine.

Well, hope this wall of text means something to you.
 
The system had previously worked with the Tt PSU (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153028 looks like the one), 3 IDE devices, and 6800GS. We tried it with at least both hard drives unplugged (less than the "previously working" state), and I think with all four drives unplugged at one point. It has onboard sound and no cards or devices other than the 6800. There's a CoolerMaster 120mm in the back and an 80/92mm in the drive cage. I had a USB keyboard and mouse plugged in, and tried both VGA and DVI cables to the monitor. Looking at some specs, it had to be a 2.2GHz 3500+ (89W) CPU, with a stockish-looking cooler. Unless this PSU is really, really overrated (500W is 43% more than the recommendation), I don't see adding a single hard drive as pushing it over the edge.

The problem is definitely not software, as Safe Mode and a LiveCD do the exact same thing. Also, it's different from your issue in that it does not drop signal to the monitor. The monitor's power light stays green rather than turning amber, and it just shows a black screen (not the "No Signal" message). There is also no artifacting at any point. It just works for the initial part of the bootup, then stops working, nothing in between.

At this point, I'm convinced that I've done sufficient testing to say it's the video card. I've just never seen a case like this. All the failures I've seen were either very climactic, or showed signs of problems (artifacting). This card seems to work fine at first (admittedly, while doing basically no work), then just completely die at the next step of the boot phase.
 
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