Random Screen Blackouts and Games Crash. HELP

[acidic_misfit]

Right ok, i need some serious technical help.
I had an ATI Radeon 9200SE it worked fine for the good half of a year, then i started getting Random Screen blackouts and a VPU Error, saying that it was no longer recieving graphics commands, these would stall for about 3 - 8 seconds and sometimes more. I then a few weeks ago went and bought a new graphics card in hope that it was just the card that had seen its days, card i bought was a GeForce FX5500. and now its still doing the same without the error, i think that was an ATI fail safe feature. but sometimes it will cut out completely and monitor says No Signal, ive tried rolling back to ever single forceware driver i could find, ive tried uninstalling and reinstalling ive tried reformatting my computer and running fresh. It's really doing my head in i want it fixed lol and also when i play games, they crash, and flicker, and one time in MOHAA when i actually got it to run, the textures and objects looked as if they were being streched, sort of big lines, dont know how to describe it.
but im going to buy a friends GeForce FX5600 today, and see if i still get the same thing, but pleasee can anyone help? i seriously would appreciate it, and i seriously need it.

thanks

 

[Merc14]

That could be a few things but the stretching lines indicates an overheating GPU on your video card. Your Nvidia utility should have a temperature display. The utility is either in the toolbar or right click on the desktop and select NVIDIA Display then select temperature Settings. Do this as close to possible to the failure point. WHat does the temp readout say now? Then run a gaame and let me know what it says.

Have to go to work but I'll check in later. It should be below 60c at idle. Higher is OK but it means you have a overheating problem in your case.

 

[acidic_misfit]

thanks for replying.

ive reformatted and reinstalled XP again.. there was a driver on XP (5.6.7.3) and everything is working fine and dandy just now, i only have my Nforce 2 drivers and audio driver installed so far, not tried any games yet but the driver that was on XP hasent got the nVidia utility programs etc

EDIT: i have no updated to the lowest driver i could find on my driver disc ForceWare 6.6.9.3, and i have hte nVidia settings programs etc now.

 

[Merc14]

That NVIDIA driver is a good stable driver for your card. Let us know what temps you are seeing when the system fails. Not saying that high temps is the problem but you need to dismiss it before exploring further.

 

[acidic_misfit]

the 6.6.9.3 driver is a stable driver?, or the other one?

the Nvidia panel doesnt have any temperature monitoring on it, is there anyway to enable this?. My computers running fine now, its not blacked out in the past 2 days although games are still flickering and textures stretching like usual, maybe it heats up to much when it accelerates, but ive been through every setting and feature on the nvidia settings software, and can't find any temperature things

 

[Merc14]

I guess that it requires you to enable the overclocking functions in the registry. This is easier done than said. Simply download Coolbits2 and execute it after it downloads. It will activate the sleeping functions in the NVIDIA utility that give you temperature and overclocking capability. I automatically execute coolbits after installing a new driver so I never even see the driver without the overclocking capabilities activated and therefore didn't realize that the temperature reading wasn't there normally. Download here http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815

 

[acidic_misfit]

i just downloaded that and installed the registry, and still no temp feature although it has a "Clock Frequency" feature now, but nothing to do with temperature inside there.. grr, games are still the same its bugging me sooo much lol

 

[smitty90]

I have a HPze4420 us w/ an AMD Ahtlon XP-M 2200+ and a RADEON M video card and WinXP. I experience the same when playing Enter The Matrix. It worked fine for like 2 weeks and then started freezing. My card still runs everything else fine so is this a hardware prob or something else? My system exceeds the requirements too. Its not the biggest deal but its a fun game and Id love to continue playing it.

 

[Merc14]

Smitty-
If it is just onegame and other games that stress the GPU equally don't cause the same problem then your game is probably corrupted or needs a patch.

Acidic, if there is no "Temperature Settings" then maybe your card just doesn't have a sensor installed or something.

 

[smitty90]

Well i've reinstalled the game like twice and i'm pretty p****d off now because it works fine on my brothers desktop that I had to fix. Well I guess I could try the patch. Could U give me a link maybe to my email. ceepyou@yahoo.com