video problem....please help!

[Atvar]

Hey guys,

I am having a problem where my entire computer screen will just turn white, or random colors. This has been happeneing at random times, mostly when I am playing a game though. It does happen every once and a while when I am just in Windows. The only way I can recover from it is to reboot, but it doesnt seem like the entire computer locks up. For example, if I have music playing in the background, it will keep playing. I am using a GeForce 4 ti4200, and have tried many drivers from nVidia, but the problem has happened on every driver so I don't think it is that. I thought it might be heat, but I can't imagine that it is I have alot of fans in my case. Here are the rest of my system specs:

ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo (using on board sound)
Athlon 2700+
GeForce ti4200
1 gig ram
Seagate 80 gig hd

Is anyone familiar with something like this?

 

[TheBDB]

That does sound similar to what happened to me when my GF3 fan broke. With mine it would happen after playing a game for 5 or 10 min, once the heat built up. I would check the videocard fan, both to see if it spins or if it is clogged with dust.

 

[Dolemite76]

Yep... TheBDB is correct... it sounds like an overheating problem... open or better ventilate your case and make sure your fan is working and not clogged... and don't overclock until resolved... run benchmarks continuously to see if you can reproduce the error... there is a possibility you hardware might be damaged but that's highly unlikely if it runs ok for a while...

 

[Atvar]

The fan is gunked up...but the thing is, sometimes I can play for several hours and there are no problems. It also just happens in windows sometimes....still going to try and clean the fan out. Thanks for the reply. Any other ideas?

 

[wetcat007]

It could be a damaged monitor cable, they can cause funky screen problems lol

 

[Atvar]

Well I cleaned out the fan and added in another exaust fan right near the video card. It didn't help, it happened a few minutes ago when I was in a game. It seems to happen almost every time I play Final Fantasy XI, and it will happen maybe once or twice a month in windows and other games. If I remember, it happend a good number of times when I would play Asheron's Call 2 as well. But I can play other games like Battlefield 1942 for a while and nothing happens.

I have no idea what is going on.

 

[Atvar]

Anyone have another idea?