Video Card Trouble (?)

[Zarathustra]

Hey everyone. Having a bit of a problem here and I hoped maybe someone had some bright ideas.

I'm currently using a Radeon 9700Pro, installed a little over a year ago after the fan went out on an nVidia Ti4200 (*shudders* bad memory). Today I restarted my computer, left for a while, came back to find that the screensaver wasn't running.

"Hm, that's odd..."

So I opened up my display properties, went to the screensaver tab... watched my screen flicker a bit and then saw a box on the "monitor" in that window saying no Direct3D device could be detected.

"Riiiiight...."

And to top it off, I got a warning that VPUrecover had saved my system from a complete deadlock and I needed to reboot. Basically the card throws itself into a type of safe mode so one can finish up things and save work before needing a restart. Handy feature... but I think it's stuck there.

Basically, the system is not recognizing that I have a card capable of handling 3D rendering, and even things like scrolling on webpages are slow to the point where you can see the screen refreshing as you scroll down. I'm afraid I've gone through another video card, but would like to exhaust other avenues before I shell out a good deal of money for a new one. I'm also in the middle of a move, so of course this is just adding to the list of things I'm taking care of today.

After I'm moved and get my system set up, I'm going to run a full antivirus just in case (hey, you never know, and I'm bad about putting off scanning my system). Once I've run out of ideas, it looks like it's time to start price shopping vid cards.

Any ideas in the meantime?

[Dozer]

I would try updating your video drivers. Happened to me once before, but I can't remember specifically what I did to fix it :unsure: But I do remember that I updated my drivers somewhere in there.

[Zarathustra]

Well, here's a rundown of what I've done thus far:

1) Restarted computer and first saw the problem. 3D rendering is kaput, normal desktop is slow to refresh. Trying to run something that uses Direct3D causes the VPUrecover to run and ask me to restart the computer.

2) Restarted, still the same, download new drivers (as of 5/12/04) and install them. Restarted.

3) Still the same. Tinkered with a few things but ultimately didn't change any settings. Tried to change my screensaver and the preview of it locked up the system. Restart.

4) Decided to try a 3D game again. Fired up NWN. It ran... but at about 1 frame every 5 seconds. Exited out and VPUrecover (which I'm really starting to despise) told me to restart. Restart.

5) Lo and behold... the desktop is rendering fine now. *scratches head* Got in touch with a few friends online giving them the rundown, with the general concensus being "that's weird". Gee, thanks guys, tons of help. But anyway, checked NWN and again it was one frame ever 5 seconds or so. VPUrecover (JOY!) Restart.

6) Here I am, desktop and web browser rendering just fine and refreshing like they used to, and my screensaver renders just fine now in the preview window. Haven't tried running it fullscreen yet and have yet to fire up NWN.

What is really puzzling me is that every time I restart it seems to get a little better. I'm baffled as to why that would happen.

[Drasca]

the possibility of leaving VPUrecover off?

I think your system is fine, and VPUrecover is on crack--wanting you to restart unnecessarily.

[Erigion]

Sounds like your fan might have crapped out and your GPU is overheating. This usually happens to me when I overclock my card a bit too much.

[Zarathustra]

The VPUrecover wasn't the culprit. I tried starting up the toolset for NWN and simply got an error message stating it could not render the preview screen and the application would be closing.

My brother suggested taking the card out, clearing out all traces, and doing a fresh install of it, but I don't see how a software problem like that can just spring up, and it's not the first time it's happened.

[Roland]

...at how easily software problems "just spring up", especially in Windows machines.

I'd recommend taking off the side panel and having your computer running, so you can watch to see if the fan is working or not. Otherwise, I think it may be time for a new card. You could have just replaced the fan on your old NVidia for about ~$30, provided you didn't fry the damn thing.

*shrugs* Sorry I can't be of much better help. I'm not familiar with ATI cards (don't like them, nor the company), but I've never heard of such a weird problem being caused by software. Sounds to me like a definite hardware problem (probably firmware or chip-based), but I'm no expert, and software can do some radically strange things.

Good luck, in any case.

[Zarathustra]

It turns out it was all software (and yes, Roland, I did fry the thing when the fan went out on that nVidia card).

I took out the card, put another in its place to handle uninstalling, and basically stripped everything ATI out of my system, then started from scratch reinstalling the Radeon. Worked like a charm.

*shrugs*