So I think my desktop has finally had it, but let's try and save it for a few more months of life and use:
PC just randomly turned off on me; first lost video signal to monitors, and then it crashed. Tried to restart PC, gets to booting sequence, then crashes again. Important note: PC is still on, but no video signal is received.
Popped PC open and sprayed canned air to clear a lot of dust out. PSU fully powered off; I disconnected all the power cables from the PSU to the motherboard, as well as popped off several other power connectors to the GPU, hard drives, etc. Re-attached, turned back on. PC ran long enough for me to start posting a thread on the forums, and then cut back out. First step, just because they're the easiest to test; popped one stick of RAM out, and rebooted PC. Meanwhile, disconnected second monitor. PC continues to crash regardless of stick. Certain the RAM is not the issue now:
Replaced both sticks back in; removed first monitor, and re-attached second monitor. Got a new error message: Attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed. (goes on and on but essentially says to figure out what hardware is causing the issues if there was anything newly installed, which there isn't).
Several additional boot up attempts and crashes; one weird quirk was that I could get into the BIOS screen and leave it running without much issue (10 minutes). At that point, I figured it must be a video card issue (GPU dying maybe..?) Next few steps I did was figure out what was the good DVI port to use, and rebooted the PC. TRIED to uninstall the drivers but the monitor would lose signal each time. That told me something else was messed up, and there must have actually been a short (all those dust bunnies!) and the motherboard is not properly communicating the built-in driver display once the GPU drivers were removed. Found the motherboard (GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4) and looked up exactly where the CLEARCMOS pins were. Turned off PSU, disconnected power cable. Applied a screwdriver, connecting the two pins together for about 5-6 seconds. Removed screwdriver. Rebooted PC; apparently last driver uninstallation went through as I saw a lovely 640, or 800 resolution screen. Found new nVidia drivers to install, and just now rebooted.
Leaving one monitor off for now as I leave the PC running with the single primary. No reboots so far (knocking on wood).
Question: Do you think there was a power surge or power short that was the cause of this entire problem? If so, do you think the short affected both the GPU and motherboard? Do you think I took care of the issue by 1) unplugging/disconnecting the PSU, 2) uninstalling the video drivers, 3) clearCMOS to correct the short to the motherboard, and finally 4) installing new drivers?
This was an annoying 1 hour to spend my time to try and fix and now I'm super motivated to get that new PC bought and built...
PC just randomly turned off on me; first lost video signal to monitors, and then it crashed. Tried to restart PC, gets to booting sequence, then crashes again. Important note: PC is still on, but no video signal is received.
Popped PC open and sprayed canned air to clear a lot of dust out. PSU fully powered off; I disconnected all the power cables from the PSU to the motherboard, as well as popped off several other power connectors to the GPU, hard drives, etc. Re-attached, turned back on. PC ran long enough for me to start posting a thread on the forums, and then cut back out. First step, just because they're the easiest to test; popped one stick of RAM out, and rebooted PC. Meanwhile, disconnected second monitor. PC continues to crash regardless of stick. Certain the RAM is not the issue now:
Replaced both sticks back in; removed first monitor, and re-attached second monitor. Got a new error message: Attempt to reset the display driver and recover from timeout failed. (goes on and on but essentially says to figure out what hardware is causing the issues if there was anything newly installed, which there isn't).
Several additional boot up attempts and crashes; one weird quirk was that I could get into the BIOS screen and leave it running without much issue (10 minutes). At that point, I figured it must be a video card issue (GPU dying maybe..?) Next few steps I did was figure out what was the good DVI port to use, and rebooted the PC. TRIED to uninstall the drivers but the monitor would lose signal each time. That told me something else was messed up, and there must have actually been a short (all those dust bunnies!) and the motherboard is not properly communicating the built-in driver display once the GPU drivers were removed. Found the motherboard (GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4) and looked up exactly where the CLEARCMOS pins were. Turned off PSU, disconnected power cable. Applied a screwdriver, connecting the two pins together for about 5-6 seconds. Removed screwdriver. Rebooted PC; apparently last driver uninstallation went through as I saw a lovely 640, or 800 resolution screen. Found new nVidia drivers to install, and just now rebooted.
Leaving one monitor off for now as I leave the PC running with the single primary. No reboots so far (knocking on wood).
Question: Do you think there was a power surge or power short that was the cause of this entire problem? If so, do you think the short affected both the GPU and motherboard? Do you think I took care of the issue by 1) unplugging/disconnecting the PSU, 2) uninstalling the video drivers, 3) clearCMOS to correct the short to the motherboard, and finally 4) installing new drivers?
This was an annoying 1 hour to spend my time to try and fix and now I'm super motivated to get that new PC bought and built...
Should give your the final "what is dead". Too bad going out and buying a GPU isn't quite like it used to be.
