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A few days ago I turned on my computer (specs in my sig) and saw this:
It was pretty much unresponsive and a minute later I got a BSOD and the screen just went black and I had to manually turn it down.
I didnt turn it on again for a few days but when I did everything looked normal. I thought it might be an overheating issue so I went into ATIs Catalyst Manager and set the fans in Performance Overdrive to 75%. Still, about five minutes into it the screen started going crazy again. While I still had some control, and not knowing what else to do, I restarted and went into the BIOS. The screen went back to normal and I started looking through the menus seeing if there was anything I could do. About a minute into this, artifacts showed up on the screen again. I hit an arrow key to go to another menu and everything was normal again. I waited another five minutes but the screen stayed normal. Out of ideas, I exited without saving changes and went back to the desktop. I waited, but the artifacts never came back even after half an hour.
For the next couple of days I would repeat this process every time the artifacts would appear. Go to the BIOS, wait a minute for the artifacts to reappear, hit an arrow key, and then go back to the desktop. I knew this wasnt a permanent fix though so I decided to completely uninstall the ATI drivers and do a fresh install. When I was prompted to reboot, I instead shut down the computer to get inside the case just to make sure dust wasnt an issue. Lets just say, I realized how long it had been since I had cleaned out my comp. The heat sink for my CPU had a carpet of dust on it which I was able to almost completely peel off at one time. My video card looked okay until I took it out and shot some compressed air into it. I eventually built up a small pile of dust that had been sitting inside of it.
I cleaned everything out as best as I could by hand (I plan on taking it out to the garage to have a meeting with the air compressor later), put it back together, and booted it up. I installed SpeedFan to monitor my temps and saw a huge improvement in my GPU temps. Before I shut down the computer to clean it I checked and saw that, with the fans at 75%, I was around 60C at idle. Now, with the fans at 40%, I was around 53C.
For a few days everything was great, temperatures were well within spec for the CPU and vid card, and I thought I had adverted disaster. Then, starting yesterday, the ATI driver atikmpag.sys started failing repeatedly, even when I was just browsing Firefox. Thinking the new 13.1 driver was conflicting with Firefox, I switched to Chrome and everything seemed good for a while but then atikmpag.sys started crashing again. I finally got fed up with it and shut it down.
Now I dont really know what to do. Im kind of getting pissed off with the entire thing. Could it be possible that I permanently screwed up my card and just need to replace it? Are the ATI drivers not playing nice with my system (Vista-64)? I was planning on swapping in an HD4870 I have but it takes two 6-pin power connectors and I currently only have one available. To get to the other one, Im almost going to have to completely disassemble my computer since I tucked it away back when built this comp. Additionally, Im not even sure if my PSU can support the extra load. Heres what I have:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703009
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.
It was pretty much unresponsive and a minute later I got a BSOD and the screen just went black and I had to manually turn it down.
I didnt turn it on again for a few days but when I did everything looked normal. I thought it might be an overheating issue so I went into ATIs Catalyst Manager and set the fans in Performance Overdrive to 75%. Still, about five minutes into it the screen started going crazy again. While I still had some control, and not knowing what else to do, I restarted and went into the BIOS. The screen went back to normal and I started looking through the menus seeing if there was anything I could do. About a minute into this, artifacts showed up on the screen again. I hit an arrow key to go to another menu and everything was normal again. I waited another five minutes but the screen stayed normal. Out of ideas, I exited without saving changes and went back to the desktop. I waited, but the artifacts never came back even after half an hour.
For the next couple of days I would repeat this process every time the artifacts would appear. Go to the BIOS, wait a minute for the artifacts to reappear, hit an arrow key, and then go back to the desktop. I knew this wasnt a permanent fix though so I decided to completely uninstall the ATI drivers and do a fresh install. When I was prompted to reboot, I instead shut down the computer to get inside the case just to make sure dust wasnt an issue. Lets just say, I realized how long it had been since I had cleaned out my comp. The heat sink for my CPU had a carpet of dust on it which I was able to almost completely peel off at one time. My video card looked okay until I took it out and shot some compressed air into it. I eventually built up a small pile of dust that had been sitting inside of it.
I cleaned everything out as best as I could by hand (I plan on taking it out to the garage to have a meeting with the air compressor later), put it back together, and booted it up. I installed SpeedFan to monitor my temps and saw a huge improvement in my GPU temps. Before I shut down the computer to clean it I checked and saw that, with the fans at 75%, I was around 60C at idle. Now, with the fans at 40%, I was around 53C.
For a few days everything was great, temperatures were well within spec for the CPU and vid card, and I thought I had adverted disaster. Then, starting yesterday, the ATI driver atikmpag.sys started failing repeatedly, even when I was just browsing Firefox. Thinking the new 13.1 driver was conflicting with Firefox, I switched to Chrome and everything seemed good for a while but then atikmpag.sys started crashing again. I finally got fed up with it and shut it down.
Now I dont really know what to do. Im kind of getting pissed off with the entire thing. Could it be possible that I permanently screwed up my card and just need to replace it? Are the ATI drivers not playing nice with my system (Vista-64)? I was planning on swapping in an HD4870 I have but it takes two 6-pin power connectors and I currently only have one available. To get to the other one, Im almost going to have to completely disassemble my computer since I tucked it away back when built this comp. Additionally, Im not even sure if my PSU can support the extra load. Heres what I have:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703009
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.
