Shnauzmax

I have recently had some strange and debilitating PC problems which I simply can not explain. This all started when I started playing the computer game Star Wars knights of the old republic. I have a radeon 9800 pro video card and the game was lagging insanely. I looked up some forums and found out that ati drivers suck. and the best drivers for that game are the version 4.2. So I basically downgrade my video driver a few models. Game runs beautifully on fullest graphical settings. At one point it freezes up and the screen turns funny colors. I restart. It happens again later. I restart again. This keeps happening a few times until one time it freezes and turns funny colors outside of the game. So I restart. But this time when I restart my monitor's green light comes on, but then goes off. the computer works fine but the monitor wont respond. So my brother says it might be my ram being dislodged. I unnattached and reattached it. Same problem. I have no idea what to do. I would try some things, but its not like i can see whats on my computer to uninstall drivers or to figure out whats wrong. Any help?

UncleMacro

I'm sorry to say it but that sounds like a hardware problem and not drivers. You didn't say what kind of computer you have but most of them display something on the screen before starting to boot Windows. Usually it doesn't start loading your drivers until after you've seen the BIOS or some kind of power-up logo. So if you see the startup stuff on your monitor and then the monitor turns off after starting to boot Windows then it can potentially be a driver problem. If you don't see your old pre-Windows images on the screen then it's definitely not drivers.

If it really is your drivers then you should be able to boot in safe mode. Hit F8 a whole lot after turning on the machine and then select "Safe Mode" from the menu. Of course this is only possible if it really is a driver problem.

It sounds like your video board might be fried. A 9800Pro draws very little power in the normal 2D mode used to run Windows. But once it kicks into 3D mode the power consumption increases enormously. If it's going to burn up that would be the appropriate time. You might open up your machine and check that the fan on the video board is turning. I was just trying to help someone a few days ago and it turned out that her video board fan had died. If you have an old PCI video board (always a good idea to keep one), you could rig that to be your primary monitor and then boot and see if you can get the 9800Pro to do anything. As your brother suggested, you can always try to reseat the RAM and your video board and anything else in your computer. That rarely helps except after you've just installed something new but at least it gives you something to try.

Shnauzmax

Well, I just checked. The video card fan is working fine. Everything seems to be ship shape save the fact that the monitor won't come on. Could it be that since I installed the old drivers which optimized my video card that I FINALLY for the first time used the card to its real potential? Thus frying something? As for my PC specs, I don't know them by heart. I would be able to tell you if I could get on my computer and run dxdiag...

UncleMacro

Everything dies eventually. It normally happens when it's under serious stress and games are very effective at providing that.

Does your machine sound like it's booting Windows with the monitor off (all the normal hard disk activity) or is it just dead? If it really is booting with the monitor off, the first thing I would do is pop the video board and replace it with one from my rather large collection of obsolete video boards and see if that boots. If not, then I'd strip all the hardware out of the machine and build a simplest possible configuration in an attempt to get it to do anything. But given the way your machine expired, the video board would be first on my list followed by using my other monitor and so on. If you can't even get into the BIOS or boot DOS then basically you're stuck swapping hardware until it's willing to do something.

On rare occasions things can be fixed by flashing a BIOS on the motherboard or video board but normally it's "replace the hardware time". You really have to start swapping parts to figure out which one has expired although it sounds like your video board given the color corruption. It could also be your monitor (very unlikely) or your power supply (extremely unlikely). If you can't even get into the BIOS or DOS then you can eliminate drivers as a cause so basically you're stuck figuring out which hardware is the culprit. This is when it's a good time to have an obsolete hardware collection.

Shnauzmax

Well it sounds like its booting up normally. I tried a different monitor. I tried a different video card. Nothing works. I am left with no options. I'm not the smartest with computers. I know for certain that it isnt the ram because if it was it would make that loud beeping noise...

UncleMacro

Unfortunately, the next major entry in that list is "different motherboard". But if you have a PCI video board you could try that to eliminate the possibility that your connection between the north bridge and AGP slot gave up the ghost. I've never heard of that happening but if all your testing involves your one and only AGP slot then you should try to eliminate it as the culprit just in case. And of course, you can try the 9800Pro in another machine to see if it's actually okay. There is a slight risk to the test machine if you do that. If I were in your position, I would try the PCI video board trick first with the AGP slot unused. If that didn't work I would disconnect every component possible from the computer including the disk drives leaving only 1 stick of RAM, a keyboard, and a video board and try to get it into the BIOS. I would run through the sticks of RAM one at a time and then try each video board. If that didn't work I would be trying all the components in another motherboard which is, of course, a big pain in the backside.