Author Topic: Screen freeze, black, psychedelic colors, no signal (Read 905 times)

BlauK · « **on:** July 17, 2006, 04:00:34 PM »

That is what happened three time tonight at MA while flying or in base gun.

The screen suddenly freezes and sound go to a loop, then the screen goes black, then shows twice a bit different messed up colors, and finally whole computer is stuck with th emonitor receiving no signal.
Reseting the computer is the only cure.

After the reset the desktop colors have been reduced from 32k to 16k.

I have made no driver or hardware changes for a year or so. Could this be because of some recent AH patches?? .. or is my video card or something falling apart?

AMD Athlon64 3500+
1024MB RAM
Radeon x800 XT PE, Catalyst 6.14.10.6571 driver, RadLinker v2.026

Eagler · « **Reply #1 on:** July 17, 2006, 04:32:41 PM »

are your temps ok? how about your voltages?

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #2 on:** July 17, 2006, 06:31:15 PM »

Video card or CPU overheating would be my guess (maybe both).

BlauK · « **Reply #3 on:** July 18, 2006, 05:31:56 AM »

Temps are ok, but I have not checked voltages... how would I do that? In BIOS settings?

Eagler · « **Reply #4 on:** July 18, 2006, 06:44:53 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by BlauK
Temps are ok, but I have not checked voltages... how would I do that? In BIOS settings?

I use SpeedFan for temps & voltages

Casper1 · « **Reply #5 on:** July 18, 2006, 08:08:30 AM »

my PC does this when it overheats (CPU overheats). I have had to clock down my processor to avoid this...

I hadan AMD 2600+ Mobile Socket A running at 2.4 GHz, but have had to bring it down to 1.9 GHz for stabilitiy. It was stable for all but Aces High on High Graphics Detail.

BlauK · « **Reply #6 on:** July 18, 2006, 03:12:33 PM »

Thanks for the link Eagler

Hmmm.. . That SpeedFan shows this kind of voltages:

Vcore: 1,56V
+12V: 5,72V
3.3V: 1,60V
Vcc: 4,96V
Vin2: 0,00V

5Vsb: 4,93V
Vbat: 0,00V

What catches my eye is that +12V and 3.3V voltages are about half of their title??? Could this imply that my power unit is not working properly or something like that?

----

Casper,
I have not touched any clock speeds or such. Everything runs at default.

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #7 on:** July 18, 2006, 04:05:56 PM »

The 1.6 should be ok on your 3.3V line. It should be drawing right around 1.5V for a modern AGP video card. The 12V line looks wrong to me though.

Roscoroo · « **Reply #8 on:** July 18, 2006, 06:27:06 PM »

12v line looks totally wrong ...

if it was at 5 volts your hard drive and cdrom wouldnt turn, there motors use the 12v rail .

hold deleate key when you hear the boot/post beep when starting up your pc

look for Hardware monitor / pc health status or something like that in the Bios that will yave your voltages listed .

BlauK · « **Reply #9 on:** July 19, 2006, 05:48:04 AM »

The PC Health page in BIOS settins does not list any 12V items at all...

CPU voltage 1,57
AGP voltage 1,50
Chipset voltage 1,60
+5V 4,99
DIMM voltage 2,51
Battery voltage 3,15
5V standby 4,97

It seems that the Speedfan does not recognize all items or at least has different title to them.

Both hard drives (one SATA and one IDE drive) and the CD drive are working ok though.

Last night was again better... no crashes in hour or two of playing.

Eagler · « **Reply #10 on:** July 19, 2006, 06:19:43 AM »

I started using speedfan when my computer went screwy after I upgraded my video card. I thought it was a heat issue at first but then realized my power supply did not have enough amps on the 12v rail for the evga 7800 gs co vcard when AH or tiger woods 05 got into heavy graphics. Getting a better PS solved my issue.
I know you said temps are ok but wondering if your problem is less if you run your box with the side off and a fan blowing on it. That helped my issue, delayed it anyway which sent me down the high temp path at first.

BlauK · « **Reply #11 on:** July 19, 2006, 06:30:37 AM »

The temps inside the box are usually below 30C. I have 2 fans in the box blowing air in.. from side and from front, and 1 in the rear blowing air out.. in addition to the large fan in the PS. So I can pretty much rule the heat out this time... I think.

Gotta see how it goes tonight

BlauK · « **Reply #12 on:** July 21, 2006, 03:18:56 PM »

Yesterday no problems, today 2 crashes already

The 1st crash was like mentioned above, but the second crash did not freeze the computer. After a while the screen came back and I saw the "Host connection lost" message. Then at desktop there was some mention about VPU recovery and error message to be sent to Ati, but it did not get sent.

I have no idea what is going on

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #13 on:** July 21, 2006, 04:36:02 PM »

I know you said your temps are ok, but have you checked the temps on your video card? Something is causing the video card to shut down. VPU = Video Processing Unit. It really sounds like your video card is overheating. Even if your temps inside your case are below 30C (which is pretty darn cool, even my room temps in my office arent that cool), many things can happen with age that can make your card heat up real quick. The fan and/or heatsink could be clogged with dust. The fan shaft could be sticky and the fan not getting enough RPMs. The thermal paste between the heatsink and processing unit could have broken down over time and is no longer providing good contact for good heat transfer.

Your video card interface software should have a temp. monitor. Open this up, start Aces High. Play for 5 minutes. Close AH and see how much your temp went up.

Barring that, you could be experiencing power supply failure. It could be intermittent. But it just sounds more like an overheat problem than not enough juice.

BlauK · « **Reply #14 on:** July 28, 2006, 02:15:47 PM »

Thanks Star!

I checked the video card temps before starting a game (52C) and then played a few minutes and ended up with 82C

.. which was a bit on the red area of the scale.

My card has a 2 year warranty which ends in next January. Should I just bring it back to the store... again? (I got a replacement last fall since thr first card broke down)

EDIT: I even got a glimpse of 98C temp at one occasion when going back to desk top