System locking, losing video

[Phaethar]

Hey guys,

My wife informed me last night that her system was having some issues. I only had a few minutes to look at it and will be spending more time with it tonight, but I was hoping to get some opinions on likely causes before that.

What happens is that the system will boot up normally, and she'll use it for a few minutes (anywhere from 2 up to maybe 20, seems pretty random from her description), at which point the screen will suddenly go dark and the system appears to lock up (fails the num lock test). There is still power to the system however. Holding down the power button is required to shut it down. Powering it back up at this point is hit or miss. Sometimes it comes right back up. Sometimes it powers up, but there is never actually anything on screen. It looked like it went through and checked the drives when this happened (DVD drive and floppy drive lit up briefly), but nothing beyond that. Appeared to be another hard lock. Shutting down and powering back up eventually would come up ok, but upon getting back into Windows it would only remain up for a few minutes. All my wife really was doing was web browsing at the time.

The system itself is a pretty fresh build, and not heavily used. Relevant hardware info is:

- Biostar A770 Motherboard
- AMD Athlon X2 4800+ CPU
- 2GB DDR2 Dual Channel memory kit
- BFG 7800GTX
- Onboard sound
- Antec Earthwatts 430W power supply
- WinXP

All of the hardware was purchased new late last summer with the exception of the video card, which is an old one of mine. The system has been running just fine since then, and only just recently started behaving like this.

I did a quick check of the event logs last night and didn't see anything that would indicate a software crash. It looked like all system and CPU fans were running as well, although I didn't check the video card fan at the time.

Anyone seen something similar by chance? I can get more details tonight if need be.

Thanks!

 

[Slugbait]

Originally posted by: Phaethar
...with the exception of the video card, which is an old one of mine....although I didn't check the video card fan at the time.

Anyone seen something similar by chance?

I've seen it happen a few times. Replaced the VGA fan, and all was good again.

 

[imported_Redmist]

sounds like it could be the video card or motherboard.
load it up and use hardware monitor or any temp monitoring app and watch the temps.

take the video card out and use another one (or onboard video) and see if problem goes away.

 

[Phaethar]

Looking more like the video card is the issue.

Cleaned and reseated the video card tonight. Wasn't too dirty, but figured it was worth a shot.

Powered it up and got no video. System still seemed to POST however, and didn't lock up. A few hard power downs and eventually I had video.

Once up and booted into Windows, I could see that system temps looked good... about 27C on the CPU and around 50C on the video. Didn't see anything that looked out of place.

After the system was up for around 10 minutes, the screen went black and the system locked up. Powered down and back up and paused the POST process and just left the system there. After a couple minutes, the screen went black and the system locked up. Definitely not a software bug then.

At this point, I'm going to contact BFG and see if they think it sounds like a faulty card, and if so, set up an RMA. It is by far the oldest piece of hardware in the system. I do not have a spare PCIe video card sitting around, nor do I have a spare power supply that would be powerful enough to run the system.