Hi all,

After giving up on Linux (I tried all of Sunday to get my Zen Touch working but just gave up in the end), I reinstalled Windows XP. Now if I try running a video or a game, I hit a problem.

I tend to have no problem playing a game until it comes to closing it down. On exiting the game my display does some crazy stuff and my PC freezes up. When I try to watch something like an AVI, I can watch the file fine - as long as I don't try to play any other video files. If I try to open another though, the display goes again.

When I say the display "does some crazy stuff", what I mean is that is becomes totally unreadable. It's a total mess of colour. It normally ends up with a repeating pattern of some kind. I think it's actually my desktop squashed, stretched and repeated a lot.

When I hit my reset button on my PC after the error (CTRL+ALT+DEL twice does nothing), the PC will reboot but the screen doesn't turn on :? I have to turn the power off completely for the PC to recover.

Now I'm going to reinstall DirectX and the latest drivers when I get home, but I was wondering if anyone has ever had a similar problem and found out exactly what the problem was. It's kind of weird that the problems occurs after I have done what I wanted to do (play game, watch video).

Cheers for any input,
Lee,

May be since you reinstalled xp that you do need the drivers again

Nope tried that. Reinstalled the drivers, DirectX and even tried repairing my Windows install.

So I ended up trying a reformat (done that about 3 times in a fortnight!). Put Linux on again, still not sure if I want to use it or not. Now it's happening within Linux, when trying to use Wine to run some games. The Linux games are fine though. So this leads me to believe my graphics card has taken a funny turn. I'll take my PC apart tonight to make sure everything is seated properly, that the airflow is OK etc. Hopefully that'll solve it.

:D yeah do be sure that the card is in, which means take it out and reinsert it.

Hi,
This might be a dumb suggestion or idea, but,
When you installed XP, did you install any updates to your Graphics Card?
Some cards have to have the latest updates before they will support certain versions of DirectX, games, etc.
Best of luck,
fredg

Yeah I had the latest of everything. Turns out it was due to my graphics card overheating. Once I took it out I saw that the heatsink & fan on the card were clogged with dust (although the rest of the system was relatively dust free :confused: ). I'm guessing this caused the trouble as all is fine now it's been cleared out.

As always, cheers for the input peeps.

Yeah thought too it had to be a heat problem maybe. Is there a inlet opening around the card. If it is that would be where its coming from.

What is your resilution set at .not sure if this will help sounds as though you have a display problem

Marty

Thanks for trying Marti but we sorted this one out. It was due to my graphics card heating up :)

Glad you got it fixed.

And to take the time to email me

Thanks again

Marty

Hi, LT,
Glad you found the problem; heating up.
I keep a can of compressed air around all the time.
It's amazing how much dust can get into a computer in a short time!
Best wishes,
fredg