Immediate Advice Needed for NVidia GeForce FX 5200 Problems

[r1ck1p]

I have an online class starting soon and really need to narrow down what could be causing the problems on my PC as soon as possible. Any advice anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

I have an AMD Athlon 1500+, Gigabyte board, 700+ MB of RAM with the above graphics card. I am running Windows XP SP2, and many other Windows compatible software (IE, Office...).

Yesterday areas on the display started to freeze or would be come unresponsive. The monitor started making a clicking noise like it was losing the signal from the computer.

I have already looked at the driver situation and everything is current as can be and according to Device Manager, the system is fine and stable. It is not picking up in anyway that there is something wrong.

After enough of this clicking and freezing the entire system crashes. I got an error message that indicated there was something wrong in the graphics region (meaning I don't think it is my monitor that is dying). I have had this machine up and running for 2 years at least now without any problems at all (this is not a recent install problem or upgrade problem). There have been no changes to my system recently (small windows update a week or so ago). I do not play games of any sort on this computer. It is not overclocked or pushed to any kind of capacity. I use it for school, email and the Internet mostly.

I thought this kind of clicking/freezing stuff might be indicative of the card dying on me and someone out there might have experienced this before. I just didn't know if I should look for this to be a driver problem or a hardware problem and needed some help.

Thanks so much in advance for any help you can provide. I tried to edit my other post to include this additional information it wouldn't work so I apologize for any redundancy between these two.

 

[SOcRatEs]

Hello! Welcome to TechSpot

If you can try the monitor on a different machine.
Have you tried removing the card and re-seating it?
What ver driver are you using?
Right click the dekstop, select "properties", click the "settings" tab,
click the "advaned" button.
Now select the "adapter" tab, click the "properties" button,
Select the "drivers" tab. This should be showing the driver version and date.
I'm running 77.72 on my nVidia 6800...
Click cancel several times, unless you changed any settings.
Somtimes, un-installing the drivers and re-installing them can solve issues.
You may need to use a Driver cleaner program avail. at This thread

G'Luck

 

[r1ck1p]

Continuation

Okay, I downloaded Everest as suggested in another thread and updated my profile with all the pertinant info. I also blew away the drivers, downloaded the cleaner, blew away the card from device manager, cleaned the system, and reinstalled the card. I downloaded the drivers from nVidia (61.77 as suggested in another thread) and loaded them as well.

While it is not doing the clicking/signal thing as much right this minute, it is still doing it some, so the problem is not completely fixed.

I should note that while the display was all big and ugly when I didn't have the drivers installed, it was not clicking at all...it wasn't until I put nVidia back on the system did it start clicking on me again.

I have not opened my box to reseat the card because I was hoping that this would turn out to be a driver issue or a completely blown card...I still have not gotten any response on whether this clicking/signal thing is a symptom of card failure....I know for a fact that it is not a monitor issue.

oh, the screen saver just locked up, I guess that means we are not fixed yet...I'll write more if I get the error message when the system locked up the first time.

 

[SOcRatEs]

Twichy monitor

Could be your monitor via the video card is set out of range for refresh rate.
maybe try a lower refresh rate. If you have it set to 75mhz then try 60mhz.
Just to rule out this possibilty....
Having the monitor clicking is indicative it's having problems
switching various refresh rates and resolutions...
Try goimg to the monitor manufacturers website and look for an .inf driver for the monitor...windows may have selected it already....

 

[r1ck1p]

The monitor is already set at 60 mHz and the thing is that nothing on my system has changed....this monitor has been working with this system the entire time, but the error message I got definitely indicated either the card or its drivers. It seems that if the monitor were going out, it would not crash my system.

Device manager doesn't see any issues and when I didn't have any nVidia drivers on my machine at all earlier today, it seemed fine. The other thing that seems to send it over the edge is when the screen saver comes on. I have it turned off right now.

I should mention that my monitor powers down when my system doesn't send it a signal. So the clicking on and off in the display makes me think that there is something going on with the signal.

I open the box later tonight and see if there is an obvious issue with the card. The whole things is weird and the thing is that I have a lot of nVidia in this system (chipset, USB, video, audio...)....thanks for checking on the monitor issue for me.

 

[SOcRatEs]

nVidia has ne drivers out
HERE
Maybe they can help....
I just installed them myself on a 6800gt an hour ago....
G'Luck

 

[r1ck1p]

I'll check out those new drivers but it seems that if I turn the hardware acceleration completely off, the clicking has stopped. What does that mean? Can I function indefinitely without the hardware acceleration?

 

[SOcRatEs]

acceleration

Yes you can for most applications but not in games
That is virtually what the acceleration is for..frame rates

Originally Posted by r1ck1p
I have an online class starting soon

As long as your school courses don't require film or video editing
it should get you through...
This is starting to sound like video card trouble...
G'Luck

 

[jermaine2000]

The system i am running is more aless identical 256mb sd ram, Athlon XP 1800, and the same graphics card and windows XP SP2, I have no problems what so ever and games run great just need a bit more ram. I suspect you have a faulty Graphics card.

 

[gary_hendricks]

Graphics card problem. Try updating to the latest drivers or DirectX and see what happens.

 

[jermaine2000]

I dont even think its a problem with the drivers the only other thing i can think of is the monitor, have u tryed your system with a different monitor.

 

[pooya_b941]

I have exactly the same problem with FX5200

Hi r1ck1p
I have a GeForce FX 5200 graphics card on my PC. Every thing was ok untill 1 week ago. Since then when I start applications that use OpenGL my display blinks and goes inactive for intervals. when I set the hardware acceleration to a low level the problem disapears. but of course I loose the OpenGL ability. Every thing is similar to your case. My driver, my other hardware peaces, my OS are all the same. I think this is a hardware failure inside the graphics card. I also removed it and cleand thorouly but the problem persists. I installed a fresh windows xp, reinstalled the drivers but it didn't help. If you got any solution regarding this problem please let me know. Good Luck man

 

[pooya_b941]

I forgot to say that since this problem apeard the temperature of graphics processor on the VGA is abnormally high.