Bad Apple there, Steve J!!

[Hermskii]

Want me to send you a PC? I can let go of a Pentium IV 1.6 ghz or a Pentium IV with a 2.8 in it I think. PM me. Let's talk.

[a nameless entity]

Gee, that's nice of you Herm, but I am now convinced that it is just the vid card on my Dell 8200. I have been looking around a bit for a replacement. If I can find a new or used Radeon of the same type or nearly, I won't have any hassles with new drivers, I believe.

My brother has offered to build me a new PC if I buy the parts, so I told him what my budget is, and he will look into it for me.

It would be nice to have two PC's again. I am tempted to go with what he finds at a discount PC supply place he has used in the past and likes.

[a nameless entity]

Well talk about weird outcomes....? Question: Can a video card damage a monitor, even though you are using refresh rates that the monitor can support?

I have been running an ATI Radeon X1650 PRO card for a few years. I bought it to replace an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro that I got as a warranty replacement from Dell. It was all I could get in the AGP format at the time, although it was in some ways overkill for my Dell 8200.
(It's an 8x AGP card, whereas my motherboard is a 4X AGP.)

The 9800 card went bad in that it started displaying all kinds of weird artifacts on the screen. Mostly little squares that were evenly distributed across the monitor screen. But I decided to try putting that card back in the Dell temporarily, since a bad display is better than none. But nothing happened, the screen was still black on the monitor, leading me to conclude that this card had either died completely also, or that it was something else wrong with the PC.
My brother suggested that I try hooking up to my 20" trinitron monitor just to be sure it wasn't a bad monitor on my desk. So I pulled the old Dell PII 300 off of its shelf/desk and hooked the newer Dell up to the last monitor I have.
And surprise surprise, I got results, there were the little squares all over the screen while scandisk worked to repair the mess from too many forced shutdowns.
Scandisk took quite a while, so I went off and heated up some tea while I waited for it to be happy with "file 9" which apparently got badly damaged. I got back in time to find that windows had found drivers for my "new" vid card. I said "no" to a reboot because I wanted to update my antivirus and antimalware and all first.

But what really blows me away is that right now, while I am on these "default" video drivers, there are no artifacts across the screen whatsoever, and I have been running that old card for at least 90 minutes. So I'm wondering what will happen when I do reboot. Will I get the artifacts, and if not will they return later?
There was one thing about my hardware installation that always annoyed me. The network card was in the PCI slot right next to the video card, and partially blocked the GPU fan's ability to breath. I never moved it over one slot to the empty spot, because it always looked like it wouldn't fit due to the tall capacitors on it. But I tried anyway, and it did fit, with some room to spare. So if I do end up needing a new video card after all, assuming the X1650 is damaged, which it might not be, then at least there's lots of air space around the video card now.

This strange sequence of events suggests that I have had two crt monitors go bad on me in one month. I always ran the NEC in such a way that I could only see refresh rates that it was capable of supporting in the list. I chose 85Mhz because it was good for gaming and easier on the eyes. The Dell crt monitor that replaced it I left on full defaults to be sure it would be ok. I even re-downloaded and installed the drivers for it.

So I repeat my question: CAN a video card damage a monitor somehow?

I am totally confused by this strange series of events, but glad to be online for the moment.

p.s. I am leaving the 9800 Pro in this computer for as long as it runs well, and certainly until I learn whether or not that that X1650 Pro might be somehow responsible for eating two crt monitors!

[Hermskii]

I'll jump in and say no. I did read your whole post and many things came to mind but in the end, I'll say that I don't think a card could or would damage a monitor. I'll also say that I tend to use the plug and plaug monitor driver for everything and never ever use the driver called default monitor. Note also that if you have XP and you updated the drivers when you installed new updates for antivirus and malware and if you do or did get he video anomolies back which those are actually called artifacs, you could always go into the driver tab of your video card and try to roll the drivers back. It will require a reboot but no artifacs are better than some. I also have a ATI 9800 Pro vid card around here somewhere with my Voodoo 5 5500 AGP. I havea huge extra cool copper with vent pipes heat sink on it. It runs very well. I had a friend who over clocked his 9700 pro and I also have a Saphire ATI x800 II or something like that which I overclocked too high and it made artifacs. I backed off the over clock and gave it better cooling and the artifacs stopped.

[a nameless entity]

Well, as long as I had this Dell hooked up to the 20" Trinitron monitor on the other desk, I had no artifacts being displayed by this 9800 Pro. But I needed to hook the Dell back up to my original monitor to be sure whether or not it was alive or dead. The computer booted up ok, got the music and all, but the monitor behaved the same way as it did with the X1650 Pro, a black screen mostly, so I must assume that the 17" monitor is DEAD.

I did not want to drag the 20" Trinitron back over to this desk. It is way too heavy for me, and it takes up all of the space from front to back and a lot to the sides, leaving little room for anything else.

So I tried putting the NEC 19" monitor back, just to see if it would run or not.

Well, the NEC is running ok for at least the moment, but HAHA, while the PC was rebooting the video card decided it was time to display all the weirdness that got it replaced by the 1650. Man oh man, I forgot how bad it is. It is very difficult to read replies or what I am typing. Nasty!


[Testing!]
Ok so now the PC is hooked back up to the 20" Trinitron. I got the artifacts during reboot, but they seem to be less severe, and are confined to the desktop. This browser window is displaying just fine, except for some dots that surround the cursor. So the Trinitron seems to be more tolerant of a bad video card than the NEC. Very weird!


I have been doing much wheel spinning today, but very little real progress seems to have been made.

[a nameless entity]

Well to hell with it all. The x1650 pro is back in the newer Dell, the NEC is the monitor, and dang when the monitor goes a bit wonky. I will buy a flat screen soon. And maybe a new system. And maybe wider bandwidth for the new system. In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?

-OR- I'll walk away from it all. Decisions..... decisions.......

Sorry for all the long involved posts, but as former inspector #170 from CGT Oakville Division, I just can't write an incomplete report.

Besides, it's my thread.

p.s. Oh and in the name of completeness and accuracy, I should report that I spotted the motherboard battery in my Dell 8200. I didn't realize how simple it all is with those. Just pop it out and replace it. I honestly thought desoldering and resoldering would be involved.
So I took the side off of my old PII 300 Dell and popped the battery out. Once it's replaced, I think the old darling may just be able to boot up again. Oh boy, I can't wait to play Duke Nukem 3D while I wait for Duke Forever to be released.
(OMG I'll have to buy that new system!! )

[Hermskii]

I think in the end, that is all good news nameless. Want me to send you a video card for more testing? LOL

Have you seen the trailer for BattleField3 yet? Did I already post that in here or was that a different topic? Hmmmm...
Anyways, I hope it all works out for you and that you are back to some full time gaming soon. Peace!

BTW, don't worry about the long write ups. I totally prefer them.

[a nameless entity]

Ty Herm. Oh and yes I think you did start a thread about Battlefield 3 here someplace.

No joy on booting up the old PII 300 yet. I replaced the battery, but it still wants me to enter a password so I can enter setup and reset the time and date. Of course, I never ever set such a password, because if I did, I would have written it down someplace.
However, I found a thread in the Dell support forums that mentions finding a jumper on the system board called PSW. If I remove that it clears the password. I must see if I can find such a jumper, and if that helps. I paid 5k for that original system, and so it must last until I die.

[Hermskii]

Hahahaha! Yes, you are dealing with a simple CMOS password. Yes, there is a simple jumper that you will either remove entirely for a small duration of time to reset the password to nothing or you will move it over from pins 1 and 2 to pins 2 and 3 for about 30 seconds. Then you just put it back and the password feature is either disabled or reset. I've done this a million times over the years clearing a dirty CMOS/BIOS. Same concept.

Make sure to read the directions and that you understand them clearly. Often, they want you to pull out the power cord first and some want you to do that and set the jumper, then press the power bottun and hold it then put it all back to reset. More on this later!

[a nameless entity]

Well I reset that Jumper and was able to enter setup. I was very careful. The processor speed resets to 233 when in maintenance mode, so I set it back to 300 mhz.

I reset the date and time, which was what was needed. The new battery is installed on the mobo already.

I set the computer up for Plug and Play. It was set to non for some reason.

I hit enter twice to clear the password to just hit enter.

I shut down, put the jumper back, AND now the PC wants to boot off of a floppy. I saw nothing on any of the screens about changing from booting from the hard drive to a floppy. The weird thing is, I don't even get the self diagnostics screen first. Or do I only see that when booting off of the hard disk? Using my Win98SE boot disk has failed. Using the very nice and handy Norton Zip Rescue to boot up the computer has failed also. Norton Zip Rescue has saved me in the past, but now nothing works.

Could setting the PC to Plug and Play be that bad? I seem to recall now trying it that way then going back to NO just to be safe. But clearly the PC let me reboot from the hard drive on those occaisions.

It seems I have made a big boo boo somewhere. Is there a way to force the PC to boot off of the hard drive that I don't know about?

[Hermskii]

Do the whole thing all over again and set the CMOS / BIOS to "not" be plug and play. There will also be a a boot order list in there somewhere. By default I would have thought it would set itself to floppy, cd-rom, HDD. Seems right now it is set to something, something floppy or maybe even floppy all by itself. Try to get to that page of the settings and tell it to boot from the HDD first. If it doesn't and defaults to the floppy or the CD then maybe something is wrong with your hard drive. Sorry so late on the response but I was looking up all of those map names you asked for. Peace. Note that the chances are very good, I won't see your response until Friday morning. Peace and good luck!

[a nameless entity]

Thanks, but I was trying to say that the computer won't boot up at all.
Upon powering up I hear the hard drive and other hardware start up, but within 3 seconds or so of powering up, I get a POST beep error code of 1 long and 3 short, and then the PC tries to read the floppy drive. This beep code then repeats itself, and the PC tries to read the floppy again, in and endless loop until I kill the power.

So I cannot check or reset anything because I can't boot up.

I had a heck of a time finding out what 1 long and 3 short beeps means. Supposedly it means that the RAM is bad. But in this case I don't think so. Because the PC beeps and then tries to read the floppy drive. It hasn't had time to get to the part where it tests the RAM.

And when I put a boot disk into the drive, it tries to read it and then gives up. Same result with the Norton Zip Rescue disk set.

According to this website my RAM is bad and I should try reseating the RAM in various combinations etc. So far I've only tried reseating the RAM. If nothing works either the RAM or the mother board is bad, supposedly.

Frankly I think that it is something else that is very wrong.

The RAM and motherboard were fine this morning. Hopefully I haven't fried them in the mean time with what I've tried to do so far.

[Hermskii]

I have found that Deeeeeeeep de de de. means video card. Change it out with anything else, preferably a PCI card and see.

[a nameless entity]

Thanks Herm. I realized that I didn't mention one mistake I made last night: I didn't put the jumper back on properly, it was hanging off of post #1 only. So that means I went into some other mode the name of which I forget. When I discovered my error, I tried the jumper on both the normal and maintenance positions but neither solved the problem and I still got the bleeping error beeps.

I don't have a PCI video card in case the AGP slot went bad somehow, but I do have the original STB Velocity 128 AGP video card with a whopping 4 meg of RAM onboard. I'll try that. If I can just get into setup, I'll be able to see where I might have gone wrong, or what happened when I messed up on the jumper.

[Hermskii]

I think I know this much Nameless and that is to tell you not to worry. I don't think you nuked the PC or any part of it. It is just something with that jumper. Put it back to the default setting that it was at before you ever touched it. Unplug the power for a minute. Reseat everything really good like the ram and the video card while it is unplugged. Plug it back in and try to boot it up.