HELP, you computer heads and Windows XP experts!!

ToonaRockGuy · Post by **ToonaRockGuy** » Monday Nov 08, 2004

I am running Windows XP Home on my home PC, which doubles as my home business (web design) PC. I began to have problems with startup about 3 months ago, and now I can't get WinXP to run at all. Not sure if it's WinXP or my video card. I wanted to inquire here before I spend money on a new video card.

Boot process goes fine until reaching WinXP startup. I begin to have
monitor problems, then when the user profile page for WinXP loads, I can go no further. No mouse pointer, and video resolution goes out the window. I can get into the boot options, but there's nothing there to help me.

Computer is a 6-year old Dell, 800MHZ Pentium 3 chip, NVidea GeForce256 video card (PCI), new 60 gig hard drive, and WinXP Home with 2 user accounts, mine (admin) and my wife's (user).

Should I re-install WinXP? Or could the problem be the video card? Thanks in advance.

Post by **Ron** » Monday Nov 08, 2004

Here are some things to try if you haven't already:

Borrow another video card of any type and try it. If it works, it may be the card or video card driver, but could still be something else. If the borrowed card is also PCI and doesn't work, try an AGP card.

Try to get into safe mode and uninstall the video card driver (Hit F8 right after the bios posts to get into safe mode). Uninstalling the video card will limit you to a small color palette, but will allow you to troubleshoot the machine.

Check NVidea's web site for a driver update. (But it can be only installed if you can get the machine to run in safe mode). All nVidea cards use the same driver, it self-detects the card and installs the correct one. Also beware... I can't use the latest nVidea driver with my GeForce2 card. Guess what, it won't boot with that driver installed. I had to boot into safe mode, uninstall the driver, and re-install the one that came with the card.

See if it boots OK from a bootable floppy system disk made with win '98. An image of this system disk can be downloaded from http://bootdisk.com

It could be a bad RAM memory chip. Also, XP will barely run on 64 meg of RAM. It should definitely have 256Meg+.

Since it is a PCI bus card, pull all of the other PCI cards out and test. It could be a bus problem, or a problem on the bus caused by another PCI card.

Most new hard-drives come with some diagnostics on a floppy disk. If you can boot from a floppy, run the diagnostics and make sure the new drive is OK. I've had drives bite the dust in a few weeks, especially Western Digital drives for some reason.

Sanctify · Post by **Sanctify** » Tuesday Nov 09, 2004

I run XP... on a 10 month old dell... worked fine till I installed that new xp service pack #2 I think... then it messed everything up... uninstalled the service pack... back to normal after a bit of reconfiguring...

lonewolf · Post by **lonewolf** » Wednesday Nov 10, 2004

I would first boot it in "safe" mode if possible, go to the control panel, system, device manager and remove the video card driver. If you can get that far, reboot the computer and see if it finds the card and reinstalls the driver properly.

It may not even be a video problem. If you can boot it in safe mode and get HIJACKTHIS on your hard drive, you could run it and it will check out everything that starts up. You can look at the list and see if there's anything that doesn't look right and remove them, one at a time.

Check to make sure you have an AGP slot before you get a new card. Chances are, if Dell didn't ship it with an AGP card, you don't have a slot for one. I think I have a few PCI video cards laying around that you can use if you want to go that route.

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Thursday Nov 11, 2004

Check your registry too...anything in there with something that looks like this: (1) beside it...delete it, it doesn't belong there....

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Wednesday Nov 17, 2004

Remove the cable from the card and look at the monitor. If what you see is clear, there should be something telling you to check the connection to the computer, then it's your video card ...

Post by **Ron** » Wednesday Nov 17, 2004

Punkinhead wrote:Check your registry too...anything in there with something that looks like this: (1) beside it...delete it, it doesn't belong there....

Don't do this!

Every 32 bit DWORD registry entry with a value of 1 is in this format! The registry lists the hexidecimal number first 0x00000001 and the decimal equivalent beside it in parentheses (1).

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Wednesday Nov 17, 2004

I did it and it got rid of my virus for me, I don't think I'm explaining it quite right, cause I know what you're saying Ron and that's not what I'm talking about....

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Thursday Nov 18, 2004

Ron wrote:
Punkinhead wrote:Check your registry too...anything in there with something that looks like this: (1) beside it...delete it, it doesn't belong there....
Don't do this!

Every 32 bit DWORD registry entry with a value of 1 is in this format! The registry lists the hexidecimal number first 0x00000001 and the decimal equivalent beside it in parentheses (1).

This is true .. Do not do this, when it comes to registry information. Most cases settings for programs have a equivalent of (1) or (0). For example if you have it set show in the task bar the setting would be (1), if you don't the setting would be (0). If you delete the string you could mess up your settings for any number of programs. Some of which have dependencies to run and such.

The best thing to do if you want to delete things like that is to back up your registry so you can bring it back if something goes wrong .. If you want to get rid of viruses get a virus remover.

The main things you should have on your pc are:

An Antivirus (Stay away from "Norton" or anything Symantec for that matter)
A ad removing program ("Ad Aware" and "Spybot Search and Destroy" are the best ones)
Hijackthis (This is a program that will find malicious things that were downloaded while on line and show you so you cn remove them)
A Firewall (If you have broadband it is a very good idea to use one of these. Even if you have a router, the router will keep things from getting in but the Firewall will help keep things from getting out, if you don't have a router GET the Firewall, although I would suggest getting a router as well, That is just as important as the inbound attack)

I hope these help .. Any questions just ask, I'll help any way I can ..

Punkinhead · Post by **Punkinhead** » Thursday Nov 18, 2004

It had to do with some worm, I got what to do off of Microsoft's site...I'll put the link up, it will explain what I mean better...

ToonaRockGuy · Post by **ToonaRockGuy** » Thursday Nov 18, 2004

Hey guys, thanks for all the responses that I got. I'm going to work on the 'puter as soon as I get moved (the wife and I bought a house, so the PC is torn down right now) and I'll see what happens.

I do have antivirus (AVG, it's free and it rocks), a firewall (ZoneAlarm Pro), I use AdAware, and I do know about the registry.

I am thinking that the problem may be a driver problem as Ron stated, since I started having problems after I DL'd the latest NVidia drivers.

I'm gonna boot that b*tch into safe mode and roll back the driver package and see what happens.

ToonaRockGuy · Post by **ToonaRockGuy** » Monday Nov 22, 2004

Okay, here goes. I got done moving and worked on the computer.

I tried rolling back the video card driver, nothing. Uninstalled the driver in "safe" mode, then re-booted. Only could view things in 640x480 with low color, and still things went downhill, with picture degradation occurring after about 3 minutes.

Monitor is okay, good signal. I also tried to boot using the "last known good" hardware profile, no help at all.

So, what's next? New video card?

Here are the computer specs again just in case anyone needs them...

-Dell computer, 800 MHZ Pentium 3 chip.
-384 Megs of RAM
-60 gig HD, less than one year old. (Put in by PureEvil, he's the man!)
-NVidia GeForce 256 Video card (PCI)
-WinXP Home with 2 accounts, mine (admin) and my wife's.

HELP!!

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Tuesday Nov 23, 2004

Get a new video card .. If that don't work, take it back . .

ToonaRockGuy · Post by **ToonaRockGuy** » Wednesday Nov 24, 2004

f.sciarrillo wrote:Get a new video card .. If that don't work, take it back . .

Went out today and got me a new video card. Xtasy 9200SE (made by ATI) with 128MB RAM. Got a good deal on it too, as there's a pair of $20 rebates on it, one from ATI, the other from Circuit City. So the card ended up costing me 40 bucks. It has good reviews on the web, so I can't wait to get home and pop it in and see what happens. I'll let y'all know. Thanks again for all the help, guys.

f.sciarrillo · Post by **f.sciarrillo** » Thursday Nov 25, 2004

I hope it works. Like I said, if it don't you can always take it back. Unless you like it better than your last one of course ...

ToonaRockGuy · Post by **ToonaRockGuy** » Monday Dec 06, 2004

UPDATE: The computer is working now, thanks to brainstorming from myself, Donnie Garber of Phantom X, and a mysterious person from G4TechTV.com!! Here's what happened:

Went out and after doing some research, got ahold of a new VisionTek Xtasy 9200SE AGP card. Installed, wouldn't work. Did more research. Discovered my motherboard is AGP 1.0 compliant, whereas the new card requires AGP 2.0 minimum.

Damn.

Brainstormed, then went and swapped the new AGP card for the same model in PCI. (There's always a way around this stuff...) Installed the new PCI card, discovered one of my PCI slots was bad...GAAAHHH!!! Moved the card, took out my old modem card and my expansion card, and BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!! Back and working perfectly. I had to leave out the old modem card and the expansion card due to the power requirements of the new video card.

Thanks again to everyone for the advice and help!!

Post by **Ron** » Thursday Dec 16, 2004

Your PCI slot may be OK.
I've seen many instances where PCI video cards only liked a certain slot. It has to do with the fact that the high bandwidth of the video is pushing the PCI bus as fast as it can go, and timing is critical. The length of the copper traces on the board can effect the timing at this speed, so some slots can act differently than others.