Help! Crazy artifacting renders my PC useless

JSACKS · 05-12-2008, 09:40 AM

I have a 6 year-old DELL 8200 factory build, 2.53Ghz, 1 or 2GB of RAM, with a Ti-4600 card that has always worked great. The PC has always been great as well.

Over the past weekend, when I booted up I got artifacts immediately on the MS Windows welcome screen and it got worse from there. With successive boot-ups since to try and troubleshoot the problem, the screen now has thousands of little blue and green squares all over the screen and the DELL LCD monitor goes black frequently--most of the time--so that I cannot even sign onto my account (and I am the Administrator). I think the LCD displays that it has gone into D-SUB mode and seems to be kicking into a sort of standby mode most of the time.

I am able to get into SAFE mode but I can't do anything in that mode because the screen resolution is 480x640 or some such size and I cannot click on any panels to make anything happen. In fact even in SAFE Mode now, the screen picture is filled with artifacts and is like going blind with 80% of one's retina damaged by crazy visual images.

The Ti-4600 is obviously no longer made so I wondered if I might try an nVidia 6800GT. However I observe that such newer video cards have molex (is that the word?) connectors and in order to plug those in properly, you need the right wires coming out of the PSU. I have no such wires visible anywhere--they are all plugged into something inside the tower. The Ti card just slotted into a relatively small slot with no wires coming out of it to plug into anything.

I have a currently unused ATI Radeon X 850 XT PE card from another DELL, an XPS Gen 4 machine, but that has the same molex stuff as any newer card would have so I have not been able to do anything with it.

I have limited knowledge of anything else inside the case. I can remove the video card (I have done several times already), CPU, and insert RAM, etc., but that's about it. I know nothing meaningful about the cables, the HD, PSU, mobo, BIOS, etc.

Can anybody assist here? Appreciate any replies, thanks!

JS

dai · 05-12-2008, 01:21 PM

http://www.microbarn.com/details.asp...source=froogle

05-12-2008, 09:40 AM	#1 (permalink)
JSACKS Registered User Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 1 OS: Windows XP Home Edition	Help! Crazy artifacting renders my PC useless I have a 6 year-old DELL 8200 factory build, 2.53Ghz, 1 or 2GB of RAM, with a Ti-4600 card that has always worked great. The PC has always been great as well. Over the past weekend, when I booted up I got artifacts immediately on the MS Windows welcome screen and it got worse from there. With successive boot-ups since to try and troubleshoot the problem, the screen now has thousands of little blue and green squares all over the screen and the DELL LCD monitor goes black frequently--most of the time--so that I cannot even sign onto my account (and I am the Administrator). I think the LCD displays that it has gone into D-SUB mode and seems to be kicking into a sort of standby mode most of the time. I am able to get into SAFE mode but I can't do anything in that mode because the screen resolution is 480x640 or some such size and I cannot click on any panels to make anything happen. In fact even in SAFE Mode now, the screen picture is filled with artifacts and is like going blind with 80% of one's retina damaged by crazy visual images. The Ti-4600 is obviously no longer made so I wondered if I might try an nVidia 6800GT. However I observe that such newer video cards have molex (is that the word?) connectors and in order to plug those in properly, you need the right wires coming out of the PSU. I have no such wires visible anywhere--they are all plugged into something inside the tower. The Ti card just slotted into a relatively small slot with no wires coming out of it to plug into anything. I have a currently unused ATI Radeon X 850 XT PE card from another DELL, an XPS Gen 4 machine, but that has the same molex stuff as any newer card would have so I have not been able to do anything with it. I have limited knowledge of anything else inside the case. I can remove the video card (I have done several times already), CPU, and insert RAM, etc., but that's about it. I know nothing meaningful about the cables, the HD, PSU, mobo, BIOS, etc. Can anybody assist here? Appreciate any replies, thanks! JS

05-12-2008, 01:21 PM	#2 (permalink)
dai Manager, Hardware Forums Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: west australia Posts: 56,784 OS: win 7 32x 64x rtm	Re: Help! Crazy artifacting renders my PC useless http://www.microbarn.com/details.asp...source=froogle __________________