Monitor problems? Need help.

[leecho7]

My roommate's computer was acting funny lately, my diagnosis was viruses and malware etc. Told him to do ad-aware, spybot all the sort, and he did them. After about a couple of days, when he tried booting the monitor turned off when windows tried to load. We tried completely reformatting the system, and it worked... that is until I installed the drivers and things like that. The same problem persisted. We were then informed about certain monitors not showing very low resolutions, and instructed us to run the system in safe mode, adjust the resolution and try it again. We tried each resolution to no avail.
It's absolutely weird that this started to happen, I never experienced a computer problem like this before, where the monitor would just shut off when windows was loading. It's as if the signal from the graphics card to the monitor gets lost or something. I'm starting to think it might be a graphics card issue, but I would appreciate second opinions as well.
So if anyone can help me and my roommate out, we'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[Will Nave]

Update BIOS if that's an option with your motherboard, and possibly try getting new drivers for your video card or rolling back to old ones....


That's all I got for now...

 

[Rob Williams]

If you installed a bunch of drivers, it definitely sounds like that's the problem. If you see your BIOS loading on boot-up, and it only happens in Windows, then it's definitely a driver problem.

Easiest way to tell, is to either roll-back the drivers, or try the video card in another computer. Even so, it may STILL be the drivers. If it's an old card, I mean last gen, then try drivers around that era, instead of the latest and greatest.

Good luck.

 

[leecho7]

Ah ok, cause it's a Geforce Ti 4200, (i think that's old gen). Thanks for the tips.

 

[Rob Williams]

Yeah, that's two gens ago. So drivers *could* be the issue.

 

[leecho7]

Ok just tried what you suggested, I tried using the drivers from the cd that came with the card and it still didn't work. So for now he has no graphics drivers. I'm starting to think it might also have something to do with the new directx, maybe there is some sort of compatibility issue or something.

 

[Tech-Daddy]

My theory... the card is bad.

Basic drivers (vga) are just going to be triggering the basic functionality of the video board. When you install the proper video drivers, it is trying to enable the more advanced functionality of the board and display at higher resolutions and color depth. Those advanced parts are what are broken.

Find another card. A cheap card. PCI would be prefered. Drop it in place and install the drivers. All works? (Likely yes...)then pull it and drop in a different AGP card to see if it is a slot problem. Different AGP card displays as expected (I'll bet yes, it does...) then put in your AGP card.

I'll bet it still fails...

Good luck!

 

[Rob Williams]

Yeah, maybe if you don't live far from your friend, you could try your 9800 Pro in his computer, and if it works, it's definitely the card.

One thing you may want to try before that though, is to install the latest drivers for his card, and then reboot into safe mode. Go into your Display Properties, Settings and then Advanced.

You can try two things. Find the tab where you can change your AGP Arch, and see what it says. If it is currently at 8, move it to 4. If it's 4 (Which is likely is), then move it to two, and then see if the problem persists.

OR, you can go into the Troubleshoot tab and lower the slider bar there as well.

Good luck,

 

[leecho7]

Yeah, he's my roommate as well. I tried my card on his rig, and it is his graphics card.