OT: computer problem

[FrankS]

Sorry to ask this off topic question here, but I know some of you are computer savy, and I do not belong to any computer forums.

While working, my computer screen changes drastically (everything gets bigger)and an error message appears: device failure. I have to reset the screen's resolution from lowest to up a few notches, and the colour rendtion from lowest (8-bit) to 32-bit, and everything is back to normal, for 1/2 hour or so.

Is the problem the video card going toes-up?

Again, I apologize for the OT post.

 

[RJBender]

Check out this site:
http://www.smartcomputing.com/Edito...cle=articles/2004/w1509/12w01/12w01.asp&guid=
I hope it's a simple fix, Frank. 🙂

R.J.

 

[bmattock]

Sorry to ask this off topic question here, but I know some of you are computer savy, and I do not belong to any computer forums.

While working, my computer screen changes drastically (everything gets bigger)and an error message appears: device failure. I have to reset the screen's resolution from lowest to up a few notches, and the colour rendtion from lowest (8-bit) to 32-bit, and everything is back to normal, for 1/2 hour or so.

Is the problem the video card going toes-up?

Again, I apologize for the OT post.

It could be the video card, but honestly, it could be a lot of things. Power supply, flaky memory, bad motherboard, even fluctuations in A/C power. Even a virus can do things that appear at first to be hardware-related, but I tend to doubt it in this case. In many PC's these days, the video card is built into the motherboard anyway, so if one goes...

How long has it been doing this, has it been getting worse, and do you power off your PC when you're not using it?

Sorry you're having these problems, that really sucks!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[photogdave]

There's one sure-fire fix for every PC problem: Buy a mac! 😀

 

[alliv]

My bet - it is your monitor that developed a fault. Borrow another and see if the problem persists, if yes - the video card is to blame most likely.

 

[Poptart]

Computers are a huge waste of time.

 

[Kim Coxon]

Hi,
This is highly unlikely to be a monitor problem. Such a fault would not give the error messages. Most likely cause is video card or failing that a registry problem. Almost impossible to say further without details of OS and computer spec.

Regards
Kim

My bet - it is your monitor that developed a fault. Borrow another and see if the problem persists, if yes - the video card is to blame most likely.

 

[rover]

Well, my Norton Internet Security thinks I am a virus. My subscription ran out so I upgraded to NIS 2006. Of course it didn't load correctly and now everyonce in a while I get kicked off the internet and have to restart my machine.

Yes, computers are our friends.

 

[FrankS]

Thank you for your responses!

The computer runs XP and last evening, the problem occurred 4 times during the course of 2 hours (on and off the computer). It is crashing with greater frequency. I'm running Norton anti-virus so am sort of protected from that. I'll drop in on a computer repair store soon.

Thanks again!

 

[kmack]

The Windows registry gets "crufty" after a while and the surest way to fix it is to wipe and re-load. Make a backup of all of the data you want to keep, wipe the drive and re-install XP.

 

[john neal]

Frank - it could even be Norton, I ditched that a long time ago as it's too overblown and slows down my PC far too much (plus it caused a string of crashes).

Just a thought......

 

[Poptart]

FrankS: here's a serious answer: go to cnet downloads and get the trial version of WinASO from their downloads site. It will only fix 10 registry errors at a time but you can just run it over & over until they are all repaired. It works grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

 

[taffer]

Well, be careful anyway. At work we had some computers doing similar things and finally the problem was targeted at a series of defective motherboards that had capacitor leakage, and I'm not kidding, we still have internal jokes about capacitor juice...

But as others said it's too difficult to diagnose without access to the machine. I'd first discard sofware causes and then switch to hardware ones, defective ram memory can also lead to strange behaviour, even though usually they are blue screens.

Also, if the video card is not built-in, sometimes taking it out and again into the card slot helps when some dust or debris is blocking some contact.

Ahh computers, ain't they lovely ?

 

[DougK]

Solid advice above.

I'd start with a data backup followed by a wipe of the hard drive, then reload the OS and drivers. Restore only the very minimun software you need to function and watch it carefully the next day or so to see if the problem reoccurs. If it does, you've probably got failing hardware and it's time to replace something. It'll also be a lot easier to tell what might be the problem if you don't have a gazillion programs interacting. When I was doing deskside support for the Evil Empire we wound up doing that at least two or three times a day; it's simply more time efficient and fdisk is a guaranteed way to get rid of pesky malware. Sure, it's possible to poke around the registry and clean things out that way, but it can be time-consuming; unless you know exactly what you want to do in there you can mess things up worse than before (we learned this the hard way with Windows 2000 while it was still in internal deployment). By that time I could probably already be halfway done with a software reload that I know will either work or give me a decent shot at finding the real problem.

It might not be a bad idea to rip the cover off and blow out the dust bunnies with a can of compressed air while you're at it... heat makes PCs (and Macs) do funny things. My money is going to be on a video card gone south, power supply, or motherboard.

 

[FrankS]

Thanks guys! Buddy at the computer repair shop suggested a trojan or worm. My son (10) was on the internet playing some arcade games so that's possible. I did a system restore to an earlier date, and so far tonight, no problem.

"To err is human, to really screw up you need a computer."

 

[Kim Coxon]

Hi Frank,
I would be wary of a system restore, quite often it only hides the problem. In any event it will only put back resgistery entries that have changed. If the problem is a "new" entry it won't remove it and so the problem remains. It is a great theory but if it is worm traffic or a similiar problem, setting a restore point is not likely to be a long term solution. I would back up the data a start again with a clean system. It's about the most reliable way to get the system running properly if it is software related.

Kim

Thanks guys! Buddy at the computer repair shop suggested a trojan or worm. My son (10) was on the internet playing some arcade games so that's possible. I did a system restore to an earlier date, and so far tonight, no problem.

"To err is human, to really screw up you need a computer."

 

[smudwhisk]

As someone who works in the industry but doesn't generally like doing busman's holidays - have you tried downloading stinger from McAfee's website - vil.nai.com/vil/stinger. It's free and although looks only for specific viruses, it will pickup a lot of the nasty ones. You could also download ad-adware from www.lavasoftusa.com, and then select personal - it's free for personal use. If you run that it may pickup spyware which is always worth getting rid of. If you're on XP, have you tried microsoft's antispyware, it's beta and expires I believe at the end of the year but that will run in the background and pickup a lot of attempted spyware infections. Or instead of microsoft there's always spybot (which I prefer) from http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/. If you're on XP and anything finds a problem, if you have system restore enabled it may stop you fixing the problems.

Personally I agree with Kim, it's generally safer to rebuild - but it's nice if you can fix the problem and avoid the hassle of reinstalling everything!

 

[FrankS]

Thank you again for all the tips! If computers were RF cameras, I wouldn't know a Leica IIIa from a Zorki 1, and I'd be asking where to set the filmspeed on the camera. I'll try those spyware sites, but will look at a rebuild over the Christmas holidays.

 

[peter_n]

Frank just came across this thread but I'd be curious to know how old the build of XP is on your computer. I have Win2K on mine for several years and I've had problems on and off but nothing I couldn't fix. It may be an intermittent hardware problem too, try hitting the box & the monitor gently (got a rubber mallet? 😀) to see if you can induce it.

To all running either Norton or McAfee, think about using AVG from Grisoft in the Czech Republic. Truly excellent anti-virus software with a very small footprint in your RAM. McAfee is bloatware these days. 🙁 Download the free version, its all you need. 🙂

Free AVG from Grisoft

 

[RJBender]

Just for grins

Just for grins

Frank,

Try a free online scan for viruses and spyware at TrendMicro. Let us know what the results are:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

R.J.