Windows hangs at starting windows screen only boots...

Cold Dark Shadow

Cold Dark Shadow

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Mar 24, 2003
Messages
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... With default vid card drives.

Was working fine til the other day when it just shut down and rebooted then hung at the starting up screen. Every once in a while itll boot into windows normally but only for a few minutes then shuts down and reboots. Cleaned the drivers out updated to the latest driver still only boots with the default vid driver. Its an older 285 card, might be time to upgrade
 
I don't suppose you have another video card laying around that would work in your system? i would avoid spending money on another video card until you have a little bit more trouble-shooting-info. Does your motherboard have a generic/intel video adapter built in? Does your system boot into safe mode and able to stay there w/o rebooting?
 
no i dont have another vid card here to test with.
No on board vid.
The system will boot into safe mode. itll even boot into windows and run fine if i disable the video card. Im actually on it right now, running off of the generic vid driver in windows with awesome 640x480 rez.
 
Obviously you narrowed it down to vid card / vid driver. Update to latest, roll back to previous driver, if those don't work then I would suspect the actual card itself. Blow it out with whatever you can, maybe even take the heatsink off and inspect visually for damage. Maybe it's time to bake it or replace it.
 
Yup tried that, tried the driver previous and the latest to the same result.
took the card out blow it out made sure everything was secure connection wise and still the same, havent taken the heatsink off tho, might have to try that and check it out.
 
well, it sounds like a windows and/or driver problem. Have you tried grabbing/installing a driver from several versions back? I kind of think that it won't help, but it might provide some troubeshooting information.
2nd suggestion: download and burn a Ubuntu or Linux Mint Live CD. Boot your PC from that CD and see how long it stays up. With this, you're bypassing windows and the video drivers. If things run fine there than you might need to re-install Windows. I would think that it would be preferable than purchasing a new video card.
 
Yeah tried a few versions and still did the same.
I'll give that a shot and see what happens. If I gotta reinstall windows that's going to suck, I have no clue what happen to my media got lost awhile back lol, have to get a new one
 
Something I noticed, if I leave the PC off for an extended period of time like over night it'll boot up just fine but after about 10 minutes give or take they'll be like a flicker then loose video feed, monitor goes black and says no signal, so I'm kinda now leaning towards that its the card, just seems once it gets warmed up it crashes, but I could be wrong
 
Small update:
Didnt dawn on me til a little bit ago to run eVGA Precision (which i usually do when gaming to crank up the fan speed) and back off the gpu/memory and have a go
So running at 602/1000 (cant remember what the stock setting was at, think it was 702/1200) and runnin the fan up around 80% (keeping the temp around 36-41C) and also running off of the older 377.50 driver its been running fine for about the last 30 minutes or so.

Might try updating to the latest driver and running these settings and see what happens if it contiues to run stable as it is.
 
just had some slight artifacting then screen went blank came back and got a "nvidia driver 377.50 stopped responding then recovered" error

No gaming, just been general web surfing and checking emails. nothing load intensive
 
thought about that too, just kinda hoping it isnt.
This set up isnt excatly the newest thing out there, maybe its time i start piecing together a new rig, its been awhile since i built one. See if i cant build something on the cheap, til then ill just keep crankin on this one lol
 
this could be worth a shot: boot up with the generic VGA driver than try running driver sweeper to clean out all existing and/or lingering driver files using driver sweeper
http://www.guru3d.com/content_page/guru3d_driver_sweeper.html
reboot and install the latest driver.

as for the power supply, i would think that you would be having other stability problems and/or symptoms if it were the PSU.
 
That's what I was using when I was trying out diff. Drivers on the chance some left over reg file or something was gunkin up the works
 
Other then that little blurp yesterday with that one driver crash error its been running fine, still have the settings backed down and fan up, havent tried updating again yet, or any kind of gaming with it
 
at this point, i suspect that it's the video card. it's probably impossible to conclude this for sure w/o trying another video card, but given all the current info it's highly likely that your video card is faulty.
as you hinted at it, it's probably time to put together another rig.
 
yeah youre probably right, i was thinkin about upgrading cards not to long ago (i think it was around the launch of the 750s) i really should do the harddrives as well. Guess ill start parts hunting and see what i can come up with.

Thanks for all help and suggestions. Hopefully this will hang in there a bit longer til i can find at least another vid card
 
That looks decent. 'Course, you'll have to decide ultimately. Do you play games much and do those games need good GPU horsepower?
I personally don't like making compromises. If money is an issue than I'll just wait and save up for what I want. If this video card would be something to tie you over for the immediate future than go ahead. If you plan on getting this card and than also using it in your future rig than I'd reconsider, but again if you're GPU/gaming needs aren't that demanding than it could be fine. If it's the other than find a nice motherboard that has onboard video so that you can save up for a proper video card.
 
Gaming nothing to major wow occasionally, load out, assassins creed black flag, maybe a couple others, nothing I think is to graphicly demanding. The 285 was handling everything I played great.
More then likely it'll be a carry over card to the next rig for a while since I don't really see doing to much high demand stuff/gaming on it, web surfing Netflix some gaming
Pretty much been back to console gaming since picking up a ps4
 
little update for shits and giggles

Finally got around to picking up a new card, couple weeks of my comp being down started to suck. Picked up the 750TI SC, it was on sale so what the hell. Came in today installed fine and everything seems to be running fine again, havent gamed on it yet, everything is updating. So i guess all in all i guess it was my poor 285FTW finally giving up.
 
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