On Thu, 24 May 2007 12:18:32 -0400, Paul wrote:

Edward W. Thompson wrote:
On Wed, 23 May 2007 10:04:28 -0400, Randy Yates
wrote:

Edward W. Thompson writes:

I have had this card for about 4 years and it drives a Sony LCD
monitor. Recently, when changing 'pages/views' the screen will go
black before regaining 'focus'. Even more recentl, after a time the
screen will dispay light red cross hatch lines.

I have run a 'stress' test on the card (proprietary software).
Initiallythe card quickly failed under 'stability'. I removed the
card and found the heat exchanger was very dirty which I cleaned. The
card now completes the stability test but the problem of the screen
blacking out between views and the red cross hatching persists.

I think the card is at fault. I don't have a replacement card to test
it against and am looking for advice on whether it is a card problem
and any advice that might cure the problem.
What, do you live on an island? Go to BestBuy/Circuit City/etc., buy
a new card, and stick it in.

Sheesh!

Actually I do live on an island. If you don't know the answer to a
question why don't you keep quiet. Jerk!

To eliminate software induced failure, I have a couple suggestions.

1) Use a spare disk. Disconnect the original disk. Install Windows
on the spare. Download and install the same video driver you are
currently using. Does the problem still exist ? If so, it is hardware.
If the problem disappears, then you know it is some software problem
in your real OS install.

2) Try an alternate OS. For example, I have both a Knoppix (knopper.net)
and a Ubuntu "live" boot CD. Those distributions do not require any
software to be installed on the hard drive. You can temporarily
boot a computer, and have a Linux desktop, just by inserting a
CD. The system's RAM is used as a temporary disk, to store files.
Each of those distributions are a 700MB download, so that
is only practical if you have ADSL or cable modem. And in this
particular case, the video drivers they use, might not stress the
card too thoroughly. There are drivers you can download, which
use the acceleration features of the card, but then that takes more
fiddling than the average user would be interested in. (It just about
killed me :-) I spent hours looking at a 320x200 sized window on the
screen, trying to type commands and fix stuff. What an adventure...)
So while I recommend this route sometimes, for other broken hardware,
it might not be ideal for bad video.

The blanking out behavior, could be a "VPU recovery". That is where
the driver has a disagreement with the hardware, and decides to
reinitialize everything and try again. Rather than crash, it is supposed
to be a better solution. But I don't know enough of the history of
the intro of VPU recovery, and whether the concept still exists or not.
It is possible they only do that on ATI cards. Maybe Nvidia calls
it by a different name.

http://www.foxpop.com/imre/2005/vpur...purecover.html

For example, here a person mentions the symptoms where both ATI
and Nvidia cards are used. The ATI blanks and puts up a VPU recovery
dialog, the Nvidia just blanks, *implying* it is doing something similar.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s...9&st=0&p=53408

Paul
Thank you for your advice