HELP! PC Went tits up!

[Nightshade]

So my PC has apparently shit itself, it acted like it was going into standby for no reason last night. I was watching a video, the whole screen went black and the system stopped responding. I shut it down and decided to blow all the dust out of it while it was off. I turned it back on, and the display during the boot sequence was all jagged and garbled. It got through the boot selection screen (boot into safe mode, boot normally, etc.) and then instead of going to the login screen, the display went black and the monitor acted like it had no signal.
Is my vid card being a moron or is something else going on? Anyone got any diagnostic utilities I can apply here?

My specs are: AMD XP2500+, 2GB PC2700, 6800GT, XP Pro SP2.

[Scourge]

Sounds like the vidcard. Got onboard video you can switch to via bios, or an extra card?

[nay0k]

Had this happen with an old CRT a few months ago, the monitor simply died on me.

What monitor and how old is it? Is there still no signal being received on the monitor?

[creep]

yeah sounds like monitor to me.

have you tried booting to VGA mode? That will set the display down as low as your card will do and might help determine if the vid card is bad or if the monitor has decided it will no longer display >640x480

[Nightshade]

Vid card. Swapped in my old GeForce2 GTS and it booted right up. Now I'm going to swap the 6800GT back in to confirm it, then figure what new card I can get on the cheap.

[Foo]

Check your warranty on that card too because a lot of them have solid guarantees.

[Kills On Site]

Yea, if it is BFG Tech, then you are set, they will replace that no problem. I don't know other manufactures warranties though.

[Nightshade]

It's a PNY I got from CompUSA I don't know how long ago. Certainly don't have receipt nor box at this point.

[AmIdYfReAk]

call up PNY support,

this is on there site,
http://www2.pny.com/support/media//File ... nty_v1.pdf

they will ask you for information on the card, ( serial number, and junk )

if it qualifies then they would replace it with the same card, of the same level card from the current lineup (8600)

[Nightshade]

Sweet, I'll look into that.

[Nightshade]

Wow, this sucks. It appears now that it's NOT the vid card, as it just did the wacky video thing again. I rebooted it, and it seems to be doing ok at the moment, anyone got some decent diag proggies I can run to narrow it down?

[Tormentius]

My next guess would be the motherboard.

[Nightshade]

That's what I was thinking, and was my original thought. But, I just installed the drivers for this old GFGTS2 (lol) and all seems well. I'm going to try swapping the 6800GT in once more just to allay my suspicions.

At any rate, diagnostic software anyone?

[Tormentius]

So are the jaggies and colour issues happening during boot before Windows loads? If so, its hardware and not the drivers since drivers only load once Windows does. Its one easy way to tell whether its a hardware or driver problem.

[Pooinyourmouth]

I gave my old 6800 GT to my friend and within a couple months it did pretty much what you are talking about. I had gotten it through BFG though and they have a lifetime warranty on their cards, so they replaced it with a 7900 GT.

[Nightshade]

So are the jaggies and colour issues happening during boot before Windows loads? If so, its hardware and not the drivers since drivers only load once Windows does. Its one easy way to tell whether its a hardware or driver problem.

Yes, during boot. I swapped the cards back and it's definitely being caused by the 6800.