Bad video card?

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

OK, I should know the answer to this, and I'm pretty sure I know it anyway, but want to get confirmation here before I decide what to do next.

I think my video card is going bad. Yesterday morning the PC was fine, but when I booted it up last night, the colors were all wonky and there are dark stripes shooting out to the sides of the screen where ever there is an icon or window on the screen. I thought my monitor was going bad, so swapped it with another one, and get the same problems, so it's something on the box itself. The colors are whats really bad-reds are sort of neon orange, blues are sickly neon blue-green, greys are either blue or black, and whites are grey. Yes, posting this on ENWorld is now probably damaging my eyesight as I type...

So, this sounds like a bad video card to me, can someone confirm this?

I've dumped $300 inot this PC over the past year-new hard drive, new memory, etc. I was hoping it would last me another year or two before I had to get something else, but it looks like it's giving up the ship.

Think it's worth pulling a video card out of an older PC and replacing it? This box is a Dell Dimension 8100, and I have a few other boxes sitting around gathering dust (an old Pentium II Compaq, a Gateway Pentium, and some other old Dell Pentium). Is it worth pulling the card out and swapping it, or should I just pull everything off and go buy something else?

 

[KenM]

What kind of card is it? Have the latest drivers?

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmmm. According to a quite web search, that's got a fairly old video card, either a GeForce 2 or worse.

Assuming that's true, you probably can just take the card out of one of your older computers and use it and not lose much.

 

[shaylon]

You can use an old video card as long as it uses the same kind of slot i.e. PCI, AGP, etc.

That said make sure that if you do things like play video games etc. that the card you replace it with is good enough to run them.

Oh, and yes I would say that you have a bad vid card by your description. You can try drivers and reseating the card but if those don't work I would swap it.

-Shay

 

[redhawk]

OK, I should know the answer to this, and I'm pretty sure I know it anyway, but want to get confirmation here before I decide what to do next.

I think my video card is going bad. Yesterday morning the PC was fine, but when I booted it up last night, the colors were all wonky and there are dark stripes shooting out to the sides of the screen where ever there is an icon or window on the screen. I thought my monitor was going bad, so swapped it with another one, and get the same problems, so it's something on the box itself. The colors are whats really bad-reds are sort of neon orange, blues are sickly neon blue-green, greys are either blue or black, and whites are grey. Yes, posting this on ENWorld is now probably damaging my eyesight as I type...

So, this sounds like a bad video card to me, can someone confirm this?

I've dumped $300 inot this PC over the past year-new hard drive, new memory, etc. I was hoping it would last me another year or two before I had to get something else, but it looks like it's giving up the ship.

Think it's worth pulling a video card out of an older PC and replacing it? This box is a Dell Dimension 8100, and I have a few other boxes sitting around gathering dust (an old Pentium II Compaq, a Gateway Pentium, and some other old Dell Pentium). Is it worth pulling the card out and swapping it, or should I just pull everything off and go buy something else?

Check the mundane before going for the exotic. Make sure the cable between Mr Video Card and Mr Monitor is tight, no missing/bent pins, none of that. If that's good and you've degaussed the monitor and the problem still persists, then yeah, go ahead and replace.

Redhawk

 

[Bront]

You can get a low end card (Like a radeon 7000) for under $50, which should last you for a while, but the older cards in the other machines might work just fine. Just make sure you uninstall the old drivers for your old card before you install a new one.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I'll try swapping the card with one of the old ones and see what happens. I'm not concerned about it not handlign games, as I don't play any that need anything more than a basic video card. Mostly, my home PC is used for surfing the web and planning my game sessions.

 

[Henry]

One other odd thing - be sure that the monitor or cable to the PC is not sitting near any strong electromagnetic power sources; if something's changed about your computing area recently (new electronic device you've plugged into the same socket/surge protector as the monitor, etc.) then even degaussing might not help.

Past that, sounds like hardware video card problem to me, as well.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Well, the only thing that has changed is that I ran new phone cable for the DSL (because we were having a problematic connection) from the box outside the house to the inside jack, but that was several hours before the problems started, and it worked fine and then all of a sudden started getting weird. No new things inside near the PC,a nd all the cables are tight. I'm pretty positive it's the card.

 

[ssampier]

Well, the only thing that has changed is that I ran new phone cable for the DSL (because we were having a problematic connection) from the box outside the house to the inside jack, but that was several hours before the problems started, and it worked fine and then all of a sudden started getting weird. No new things inside near the PC,a nd all the cables are tight. I'm pretty positive it's the card.

Easy to trouble-shoot. Take a known good monitor and plug into your ailing PC. If it does the same thing, it's the video card. It works fine, you know the monitor is bad.

The DSL connection is probably concidental that has nothing to do with your video card problem. My suggestion buy a new video card; good AGP cards are fairly inexpensive.