baldasacoot

Yes, another one!

While playing a certain game recently (ToEE) my PC has sometimes rebooted for no reason. On restart, everything was fine until yesterday when it didn't reboot, so I started it and I got the POST screen and then the Windows logo on the black screen, but then the monitor goes black, I hear the startup music and it's fully booted up, but I never get the Blue Windows XP loading screen and I can't see the desk top. I can close down by pressing the weird little Windows flag key (between CTRL and ALT), then the up arrow once, then return, then TAB and then return. This brings up the shut down box and selects shut down, rather than restart.

The green light (well, mine is blue) is on, suggesting it's receiving a signal.

I do not get a Video Input, 1 DVI-D NO SIGNAL message, but if I press the button to change to a different mode, I do get the 2 D-Sub NO SIGNAL message, which is not surprising as the d-sub is not connected.

Sometimes, on re-booting, the boot up fails again and again, or there's no POST at all, but if I remove the card and reseat it it's OK. I just have to go through the "failed to start" mumbo and last known good configuration gives me a black screen again.

It works in Safe Mode, so I don't think its a problem with the VGAsave service being disabled (which I had once).

I tried using the XP disc to use recovery console but while it's booting from the disc the monitor gives up waiting and the blue light goes orange and then it shuts off. When I turn it on again I get the dreaded 1 DVI-D NO SIGNAL message. So I re-boot and Windows starts, but I just can't see anything after ther black logo screen.

I tried the BIOS and everything seems as it should be - I can't see anything to disable the on-board vdu circuit.


SO, my questions are:

Has my graphics card burned out, so time to get a new one?

What else can I do to fix this?


Cheers

~

baldasacoot

Solved it.

It looks like I had some corrupted drivers which may have got nurfed by the game I was playing, plus the mods for it.


I managed to get recovery console working but it just said that the service was already enabled.

So I downloaded the latest Catalyst driver set from ATI on my PC at work, took it home and boioted in Safe Mode.

I uninstalled all the Catalyst and ATI drivers I could and rebooted to safe mode.

It tried to detect my card but I cancelled out and it seemed to be working fine with whatever comes with XP2.

I rebooted to normal mode and it started fine, with blue Welcome screen and everything working but screen at very low resolutuion.

It tried to detect my card but I cancelled out and installed the Catalyst drivers.

I got a few weird error messages like "No display service" and some severe and critical errors, but it finished installing and then I rebooted.

I let it detect my card and it couldn't find the drivers, so I installed them again and rebooted and this time it found everything and installed them properly and it seems to be working again.

Then ATI Catalyst configured itself and we're away.


Cheers