What's going on with my computer? (The computer help thread)

Nine Boomer

Go to Super User first!

This is the general purpose "help!" thread for all those computer related problems. Note that my problem has been solved and can be ignored.

I need help, I don't know what's going on.

First of all, my computer was fine until today. I just came back from holiday, and I haven't touched my computer for a week.

I started gmod, and everyone that OK until I joined a server. Once I joined, I moved about for about 15 seconds, typing stuff and looking around. Then it happened. Suddenly, there was full on 255 green in certain parts of the game, and it was frozen. The screen refreshed every 5-10 seconds which didn't really help much because everything was going all weird. I closed the game through the task manager and restarted my computer.

The same thing happened again when I rebooted and started the game. Everything was going very strange, and I took an 8 minute video of it but I don't know if I can upload it.

When I closed the game process through the task manager, I was browsing around on the internet, catching up on my blogs. Then I noticed a subtle shift from white to pink, just momentarily. I focused on some random white space, and I saw my monitor again shift from white to pink, then back to white. Then, it shifted rapidly to a very strong pink, there were some strange patterns, and my computer froze again. I shut it off because now I think my hardware is damaged in some way.

What is causing this? I don't want to turn on my computer again in case something is about to short-circuit/blow up/ some random cool thing involving destruction. This hasn't happened until now, after a 1 week break in which I didn't use my computer.

Omnutia

Garry's Mod randomly crashes my PC after playing for 15 mins or so. Your hardware could be fine.

Dr. Timo

What is causing this?

LSD flashbacks?

Nine Boomer

What is causing this?

LSD flashbacks?

If I can upload the video, it's quite messed up. The problem is that now my monitor is not displaying anything! I tried starting my computer after letting it cool down, and now that I turned it on, my monitor is flashing a green light at me. I can hear the BIOS go beep, and grub is loading. I can also get to windows since I know its location on the list, and I can hear my webcam start up. However, nothing is on the screen! Just that little green light flashing at me. Have I burned out my graphics card?

I've never had hardware fail on my before like this. Joe is very confused!

Omnutia

Yeah, that sounds like a fried graphics card or, possibly, monitor.

Sail

Sounds like the graphics card.

MrRoboto

unplug the monitor from the computer and clean the connections, do it on the monitor side as well, if it doesn't work, plug in an old monitor and see if something comes up, then you will have your answer.

Dr. Timo

I've never had hardware fail on my before like this. Joe is very confused!

Normally, solid state electronics don't just fail. If your machine is old, accumulated dust may have impaired the airflow over your graphics card to a point where it over heated.

Nine Boomer

I've never had hardware fail on my before like this. Joe is very confused!

Normally, solid state electronics don't just fail. If your machine is old, accumulated dust may have impaired the airflow over your graphics card to a point where it over heated.

It seemed like it was progressive, first starting with the game, then the browser. I think you're right about what happened, but I just hope that my graphics card is recoverable.

unplug the monitor from the computer and clean the connections, do it on the monitor side as well, if it doesn't work, plug in an old monitor and see if something comes up, then you will have your answer.

Once I finish my dinner, I'm going to try this out.

Nine Boomer

Nope, nothing is fixed so far. I can't find another graphics card to replace the one I currently have to see, so I don't know what else I can do right now.

Alan

Sounds like it may be the video ram on the gpu. I had this problem on a older pc of mine but with the video switching to the red side of the spectrum. If you can get a picture on that card you might want to under clock the card until you can get a new one.

Nine Boomer

I (perhaps rather stupidly) filmed the 8 minute randomness that occurred during my game. It's kind of long and is comprised of shaky-cam of my monitor. Here's the video of what happened until I restarted it:

My monitor is on an lsd trip!

Vhdblood

I (perhaps rather stupidly) filmed the 8 minute randomness that occurred during my game. It's kind of long and is comprised of shaky-cam of my monitor. Here's the video of what happened until I restarted it:

My monitor is on an lsd trip!

You need to find out if it's the monitor or the GFX card, but I'd put money on the GFX card being the issue.

Nine Boomer

Yup, graphics card is fried. My poor 8800gtx. At least I've got a spare 7600 lying about, and my 8800GTX is covered under warranty for 10 years. Don't know if they'll accept it though.

Vhdblood

Can we just go ahead and make this the official computer help thread? Either way, I'll ask my question here.

Yesterday, I was playing that rabbit killing flash game (sorry emily :P), and at the same time, I fired up steam. This normally isn't a problem for my computer. It's fast enough to run a whole shitload of apps at once.

Anyway, all the sudden in the middle of a rabbit killing wave, I got a hard freeze with the sound locking up and everything, and then it stopped after a few seconds and the Steam box popped up, which led me to believe they were related. Then it happened again. Hard freeze for a few seconds, then fine for about 5-7 seconds. This repeated until I restarted the computer. I tried closing everything I had running, including the explorer.exe process just to see. I noticed in the task manager that the processor was spiking on every freeze, but as the computer was frozen, I couldn't see which process was doing it.

Now, that kinda worried me, but I was okay, until i happened again. This time, it was during my Quake Live game. Same thing, same symptoms, same restart fix. I don't know what's doing this, as I wasn't doing anything other than playing Quake Live, and no other programs had opened recently.

Edit: I also left it on all night without a freeze. Nothing was running that had needed an processor power though.

Okay, for clarification, these are the things I tried:

-Closing all processes and trying to find the one that was spiking
-Checking the case and temperature sensors for overheating
-Cleaning out the dust just to make sure (there wasn't a lot, this was for good measure)
-Leaving the computer going to see if I would get a blue screen, then I would know if it was a driver issue and which driver

*I'm now going to reinstall my graphics drivers and restart. Other than that, I can't think of what drivers would be causing this. I may try running steam to see if that's the issue, but I don't even think it was on last freeze-thing.

Related Computer Specs:

Intel 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700
2 Gigs Ram
Radeon HD 3850 256mb

So, ideas?

Apreche

I was also playing the rabbit killing flash game

Nine Boomer

You should try closing all extraneous applications, so that you are running with a barebones PC. Since you reported no freezing issues, you should try running a program that is processor intensive. If you don't notice anything after a while, try running another intensive program after closing the first one. You mentioned steam and a firefox, fiddle around with those two programs and see what happens. Run one, then the other, but never both at the same time.

Incidentally, you should also try to close the process tree of explorer.exe by right clicking on the process. If your problem isn't solved Close down everything you can, one process at a time. Try to cut everything down to a bare minimum, including things like your antivirus, and even those weird system processes and see if there is still any spiking. Try to remember what you just ended, in case you find the problematic process.

Also, have you installed any new programs?

See if any of that will help you in some way, and report back on any data you gathered.

Apreche

safe mode is also good.

Vhdblood

You should try closing all extraneous applications, so that you are running with a barebones PC. Since you reported no freezing issues, you should try running a program that is processor intensive. If you don't notice anything after a while, try running another intensive program after closing the first one. You mentioned steam and a firefox, fiddle around with those two programs and see what happens. Run one, then the other, but never both at the same time.

Incidentally, you should also try to close the process tree of explorer.exe by right clicking on the process. If your problem isn't solved Close down everything you can, one process at a time. Try to cut everything down to a bare minimum, including things like your antivirus, and even those weird system processes and see if there is still any spiking. Try to remember what you just ended, in case you find the problematic process.

Also, have you installed any new programs?

See if any of that will help you in some way, and report back on any data you gathered.

I've pretty much done this already, and I can't get it replicate. I've been trying all day to get it to freeze again and it won't. I really don't know what's up.

Nine Boomer

I've pretty much done this already, and I can't get it replicate. I've been trying all day to get it to freeze again and it won't. I really don't know what's up.

If you don't encounter it again, I don't think you should try to investigate that much further. Of course, always keep a mental note so that you can add 1+1 later on if anything else occurs. Then again, if anyone else recognizes these symptoms as something dangerous, then that is a cause for more investigation. Don't sweat it, at least until the symptoms pop up again.

Vhdblood

I've pretty much done this already, and I can't get it replicate. I've been trying all day to get it to freeze again and it won't. I really don't know what's up.

If you don't encounter it again, I don't think you should try to investigate that much further. Of course, always keep a mental note so that you can add 1+1 later on if anything else occurs. Then again, if anyone else recognizes these symptoms as something dangerous, then that is a cause for more investigation. Don't sweat it, at least until the symptoms pop up again.

I just had to say, I'm watching Numb3rs, episode 3 of season 1, and it's about a virus outbreak. I just thought you wording related to that too well. :P

HungryJoe

I have an old computer back in KY that runs Windows 98. There is some data on its hard drive that I'd like to have here. We're going back there next weekend for the Kentuckiana Dog Show, so I'm going to take out the hard drive and put it into an external drive box, as was suggested in an older thread, so I can bring it back and access the data with my newer computer.

I don't think I'll have any problems doing that, but I've been wondering (and I can't find the answer on the internet - I must not know the right search terms): Since this drive will still have an operating system, can I use it? That is, if I wanted to play Burn: Cycle (which won't play on Windows XP), can I play it on the external drive? Also, could I use this drive to access the internet without interference from the "main" computer's drive? Could I access applications on both drives simultaneously? That is, could I use Outlook through the "main" drive and Internet Explorer thriugh the external drive at the same time?

Nine Boomer

I don't think I'll have any problems doing that, but I've been wondering (and I can't find the answer on the internet - I must not know the right search terms): Since this drive will still have an operating system, can I use it? That is, if I wanted to playBurn: Cycle(which won't play on Windows XP), can I play it on the external drive? Also, could I use this drive to access the internet without interference from the "main" computer's drive? Could I access applications on both drives simultaneously? That is, could I use Outlook through the "main" drive and Internet Explorer thriugh the external drive at the same time?

I know in the bios you can sort the boot order, so that whenever your external is plugged in, it will boot up from that. However, especially on one of the older systems, you may not have that option.

However, you will have problems with different file systems. As far as I know, windows 98 can't read NTFS, which is what XP uses. XP can see fat32, which would be the windows 98 uses. One can access the other, but not vice versa. If you can boot up into windows 98 you will be able to play Burn: Cycle, but you won't be able to access the windows XP drive.

So for running programs from both disks, you'll be running them in windows XP. You can load up programs from the external drive drive so that they run on XP. However,I think you won't be able to run Internet Explorer from the external considering that XP integrates IE into the operating system. You'll have to see what you can and can't run, as you may have conflicts with existing files.

I think I may have written that a bit sloppily, ask me if you need clarification. ^_^

YoshoKatana

Simple: You can access data on the '98 drive, but not run anything from it.

Explained: Technically, you can boot from either the XP or '98 drive. Unfortunately, you won't have any drivers installed (or the wrong drivers already installed) for your hardware, so Windows '98 may not even be usable. For programs like Burn: Cycle, try installing/running them under "Windows 98 Compatibility Mode." Also, '98 doesn't have plug and play. THIS IS A PROBLEM FOR ANYONE USING WINDOWS 98 NOWADAYS.

Vhdblood

I'm having this really strange issue where my wireless connection has %100 connection, but no matter what browser I'm using, the internet seems to come in bursts. Strangely, sometimes the internet works ok, loading pages alright, but sometimes, it just won't load and gives a page load error. Refreshing these pages will eventually make them load, and when one page loads, all of them seem to for about two minutes, then everything stops loading again. I looked into this and all of the router setting are set to the correct settings as far as I can tell. The only issue I can plainly see is that, even with %100 connection, I'm only getting 36 mbps, every now and then peaking up to 48 and then back down to 36.

I've tried numerous things, such as changing the wireless channel to avoid interference, changing router IP's and settings, rebooting everything on the network, doing hard resets, etc. What's the deal?

(Also, I forgot to mention, the internet works fine when directly connected, only the wireless has this issue.)

(Double also, I wanted to mention that all of my other applications work fine constantly, there's no stuttering in torrents, IM, or even Firefox downloads, it's only loading pages.)

Vhdblood

Bump? Normally I wouldn't do this, but I really need an answer for this. If I don't get anything this go around, I'll give up, it's just driving me insane.

Omnutia

Have you tried connecting over the wire? I doubt it's the wireless connection but it'd help if you could rule it out.
Could you also try with all other internet traffic turned off?

Vhdblood

Have you tried connecting over the wire? I doubt it's the wireless connection but it'd help if you could rule it out.

the internet works fine when directly connected, only the wireless has this issue.

There ya go.

Could you also try with all other internet traffic turned off?

I have, it doesn't change anything.

Omnutia

Tried moving your xyzabc.default folder to somewhere else?

Jason

Try editing your FF about.config file.

Vhdblood

Tried moving your xyzabc.default folder to somewhere else?

I'm not following.

Try editing yourFF about.configfile.

This happens in any browser, and it just started a week ago.