Please help with strange meltdown

I dual-boot to two copies of XP Pro SP1, each on its own 80gb hard drive.
Earlier today on HDD-0 (the one I use for work) I experienced a sudden
re-boot while doing a Google search. No glitch, no warning, nothing. It
just shut down and re-booted. As it was loading back to desktop, the screen
all of a sudden looked like it was melting. The desktop display broke up
into hundreds of tiny rectangles - like a checkerboard pattern - in all
sorts of unusual colors, and then started shifting like the display was
running downward. I did a hard shut down and booted up to HDD-1 (the one I
use for non-work purposes), and it loaded and ran fine. I updated and ran
virus scan and ad-aware on all drives. No malware showed up. I ran a
couple of stress tests on my RAM and video card, which revealed nothing, and
then I booted back to HDD-0. For the past hour I've been working on this
hard drive, and all seems okay.

In lieu of me providing much more info at this stage - the different s/w on
the two hard drives, any different updates that my exist on one or the
other, display resolutions, etc - for serious troubleshooting, has anyone
experienced this specific thing before?

Thank you,

jakesnake

Jake wrote:
I dual-boot to two copies of XP Pro SP1, each on its own 80gb hard
drive. Earlier today on HDD-0 (the one I use for work) I experienced
a sudden re-boot while doing a Google search. No glitch, no warning,
nothing. It just shut down and re-booted. As it was loading back to
desktop, the screen all of a sudden looked like it was melting. The
desktop display broke up into hundreds of tiny rectangles - like a
checkerboard pattern - in all sorts of unusual colors, and then
started shifting like the display was running downward. I did a hard
shut down and booted up to HDD-1 (the one I use for non-work
purposes), and it loaded and ran fine. I updated and ran virus scan
and ad-aware on all drives. No malware showed up. I ran a couple of
stress tests on my RAM and video card, which revealed nothing, and
then I booted back to HDD-0. For the past hour I've been working on
this hard drive, and all seems okay.

In lieu of me providing much more info at this stage - the different
s/w on the two hard drives, any different updates that my exist on
one or the other, display resolutions, etc - for serious
troubleshooting, has anyone experienced this specific thing before?

Thank you,

jakesnake

Is this the first time this happened? I experienced a similar problem as
the checker board symptom once when my monitor cable was almost falling off.
I shut down and tightened the cable and it never happened again, of coarse.
I would wait and see if it happens again before I worried to much. Might
have been a power fluctuation of a bad power supply maybe.

J.

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 23:43:56 GMT, "Jake"
wrote:

I dual-boot to two copies of XP Pro SP1, each on its own 80gb hard drive.
Earlier today on HDD-0 (the one I use for work) I experienced a sudden
re-boot while doing a Google search. No glitch, no warning, nothing. It
just shut down and re-booted. As it was loading back to desktop, the screen
all of a sudden looked like it was melting. The desktop display broke up
into hundreds of tiny rectangles - like a checkerboard pattern - in all
sorts of unusual colors, and then started shifting like the display was
running downward. I did a hard shut down and booted up to HDD-1 (the one I
use for non-work purposes), and it loaded and ran fine. I updated and ran
virus scan and ad-aware on all drives. No malware showed up. I ran a
couple of stress tests on my RAM and video card, which revealed nothing, and
then I booted back to HDD-0. For the past hour I've been working on this
hard drive, and all seems okay.

In lieu of me providing much more info at this stage - the different s/w on
the two hard drives, any different updates that my exist on one or the
other, display resolutions, etc - for serious troubleshooting, has anyone
experienced this specific thing before?

Thank you,

jakesnake


It was your video card. Typically when this happens it's
dying, but maybe a brief AC (or PSU) power anomoly caused
the video card to only temporarily malfunction, returning to
normal after a complete shut-off. I'd expect it's going to
happen again though, possibly varying with the temp of the
system.... or maybe I"m wrong, but that's when I've seen
similar video rectangles.

"Jake" schreef in bericht
...
I dual-boot to two copies of XP Pro SP1, each on its own 80gb hard drive.
Earlier today on HDD-0 (the one I use for work) I experienced a sudden
re-boot while doing a Google search. No glitch, no warning, nothing. It
just shut down and re-booted. As it was loading back to desktop, the
screen
all of a sudden looked like it was melting. The desktop display broke up
into hundreds of tiny rectangles - like a checkerboard pattern - in all
sorts of unusual colors, and then started shifting like the display was
running downward. I did a hard shut down and booted up to HDD-1 (the one
I
use for non-work purposes), and it loaded and ran fine. I updated and ran
virus scan and ad-aware on all drives. No malware showed up. I ran a
couple of stress tests on my RAM and video card, which revealed nothing,
and
then I booted back to HDD-0. For the past hour I've been working on this
hard drive, and all seems okay.

In lieu of me providing much more info at this stage - the different s/w
on
the two hard drives, any different updates that my exist on one or the
other, display resolutions, etc - for serious troubleshooting, has anyone
experienced this specific thing before?

If You see it happen again, check whether the fans of Your computer, esp.
the VGA-card, are running properly.

Good luck,
Rene