Help a youngster out. Please

S

singingstallion

n00b
Joined
Dec 8, 2005
Messages
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Hi, I'm a recent lurker and 18-year old with no disposable income who just scrounged up enough money to buy my dream system, an Athlon 64 3500 with 1GB DDRAM and a 7800GT video card. It should be arriving in a couple days now :D.

Sorry, I don't know much about computers but I try to learn what I can, so please bear with me.

Sole reason being is that my old trusty computer is dying, but I would really like to get it working again as a nice, reliable computer for my little brother.

Performance specs are pitiful:
1.7Ghz Pentium 4
384MB SDRAM
Nvidia Geforce2 MX200
Windows XP

I have a strong suspicion that its the video card, because of all the video-related problems I've been having, but I have not ruled out anything else, except my processor which is running at 35C. I formatted and reinstalled Windows XP yesterday but the problems are still here.

Often, I will turn on my computer, but my monitor (which is always on) will not recognize that it is turned on. I usually have to turn it off and turn it back on again until the light on my monitor turns from amber to green.

There is strange behavior with that blue loading bar at the Windows XP loading screen. I hope you guys know what I mean. The Blue bars will move outside of the skinny rectangular box to the right. Very bizarre.

OK, so I've made it to Windows, with the serene green pasture background and "start" button at the bottom left. (Sorry, my computer vocabulary is crap). Sometimes, my screen will turn completely blank, and the green LED on my monitor will turn amber. Its as if my monitor forgot that my computer was turned on. It will do this every few minutes.

The only gaming I really do on the computer is Wolfenstein Enemy Territory and my collection of vintage ROMs. The ROMs play fine.

But, I can hardly describe the nightmare of Enemy Territory. It looks incredibly, incredibly bad. Dunno how to describe it. The colors are wrong and everything is chunky. It's as if someone chewed up the loading screen, swallowed, and regurgitated it all back up with new colors and everything. Definetly malfunctioning. (If you need elaboration on how BAD it looks, please feel free to ask ;) ).

So, there we have it.
I have a hunch that its this ancient Geforce2 MX200 that is causing all the grief, but if these symptoms are indicative of possibly anything else, like PSU, RAM, hard drive, CPU, please let me know.

I ordered a Geforce 5900 XT off of ebay for $39. Yay or nay?
 
Just so everyone is clear - This is an graphics card, correct? Not integrated graphics?

What video drivers are you using?
have you tried a different monitor? Something perhaps could be going wrong with the monitor.

If your card is indeed bad the 5900XT will treat you just fine for the older games you are runnning as long as your motherboard has an AGP slot, which if I am reading your post right it should. It will run some new games decently too if you ever decide to. For 40 bucks you cant go wrong.
 
Definitely rule out the monitor if you can, either using another comp, or another monitor.

New drivers? Onboard or slot?
 
Yes, this is a graphics card with AGP.

I forgot to mention, I updated the drivers with 81.95.

I will test the monitor on a different computer, just need to rule else out.

:D
It pleases me to think how much of an upgrade this new video card will be for me. Does anyone care to give me an idea of what to expect? (assuming this does correct the problem)

Geforce2 MX200 32MB to a Geforce 5900 XT to a Geforce 7800GT.

So excited, first computer-related purchases in years.




Edit: FYI, I may have damaged my video card by static when I forgot to touch a metal object. That goes same for everything else inside my computer. I guess I'm really trying to convince myself that its the card, but that aside it could be anything.
 
Going from your current vid to the 5900 should be like night and day. But if you really want the full effect, wait until you get everything in :D

I'm almost thinking you may be bottle-necked by your RAM. Depnding on what you'll be playing of course. With ROMs, I don't see any impact being made.
 
Monitor, videocard, or ram could cause the above symptoms...

Try taking a screenshot of the "regurgitated" loading screen by holding down the "shift" key and pressing the "print screen" key. Past it into MSPaint, save it, then goto www.imageshack.us, upload it and link us to it...

Not sure if it will save as "regurgitated" or not, but im interested to see..
 
Sure, this is what it looked like last time I loaded it. It's not the same :confused:

It's all blinky and shit, obviously can't make anything out.

2.jpg
 
Wow. Ram could cause that, shish? Seems like it wouldn't post at all if the ram was that borked. My bet is on the vid card. When is the new one due in?
 
that looks like your res is set to 100x100 in the SS... yes ram can cause a scrambled image.. (ive had it happen to me, and have worked on PC's that have experienced that as well).. however my bet is still on the video card also.
 
ShiShKaBoB said:
that looks like your res is set to 100x100 in the SS... yes ram can cause a scrambled image.. (ive had it happen to me, and have worked on PC's that have experienced that as well).. however my bet is still on the video card also.
Click to expand...

Horror story:

I was working on a friend's compaq <horror part 1> and when we cracked open the case, it looked as though coke or pepsi got sucked in through the back of the case, splattering all over the motherboard. <horror part 2> Well, I spent a couple hours trying to clean everything up as best I could, but the stuff got into the ram slots, and I couldn't clear all of it out. Tried to boot the machine, and got very similar screen that you showed, so ram definitely could have caused it. The compaq was running on integrated video, not a discrete vid card. My guess would lean towards vid card however as well.
Question: there is a screen sometimes right before the main POST screen, that shows the video card info. Does that show up, and if so, is it scrambled as well? sometimes it's too fast for a monitor to display it. Just curious if that is showing up.
 
ShiShKaBoB said:
that looks like your res is set to 100x100 in the SS... yes ram can cause a scrambled image.. (ive had it happen to me, and have worked on PC's that have experienced that as well).. however my bet is still on the video card also.
Click to expand...

That's nuts. I would have never thunk...just from my own experience.
Wouldn't be a bad idea to make the thing even more "serviceable" either way - getting new/different ram. I imagine we're talking about 3X128MB sticks to start with. 2X256 can be picked up on the cheap and perform much better than 3X128.
 
I'd replace the vid. card. You could probably get the equivilent for aobut 10-20$.
 
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