MAJOR problem with my machine

[Stecher]

(I'm using another computer for this because I can't use mine to do it.)

I'm having a serious error with something, I think either with my video card or the software connected with it. It first happened Saturday morning. Friday night I put it on Stand By, woke it up in the morning, used it a little, and then went to watch some football. The screen saver was on, but after a while the screen shuts off. This is when I came in and moved the mouse to wake it back up and POOF. Three pixelated vertical bands about 1 inch across the screen and distortions around the cursor and anything that's moved. Restarting didn't fix it. Shutting down and starting up didn't fix it. Unplugged everything, opened it up, cleaned it as much as I could, hooked everything back up, no change. Updating my Cats from 4.1 to 4.9 didn't work either. And then it got worse. About half the time after the windows loading screen, which by the way is checkerboarded with square distortions, before getting to the desktop my whole screen just goes black. One time I got a blue screen because it shut down windows to prevent damage, and mentioned that the file ati2vdag might be causing it, and it mentioned something about an infinite loop. Had to do a hard shutdown and startup again and right off the bat it gave me a black screen with a color window that said some frequency was wrong, and had to do another hard shutdown. My sister found on another forum a process that a lot of people said worked if you had a problem with ati2vdag and infinite looping. The problems they reported were no where near as serious as mine, but I gave it a shot. When I started up I was given a DOS type screen and selected Safe Start, tried that process and restarted. Same ole crap. I'll be calling Dell later today. Any of you guys know what is going on?

[Mölders]

Sounds like another case of the computer gremlins . anyway, to comment on the wrong frequency thing, I got that when I tried playing Silent Hunter 2, and Starlancer. I could not identify the problem, so I switched monitors and found out it worked fine with a different monitor. Prehaps your monitor is having problems communicating with your video card ? BTW what type of video card do you have? Anyway, to sum it up, try switching monitors if possible.

[Stecher]

Oops, sorry. I have a 128 MB ATI Radeon 9700 Pro.

[Specter]

That sucks man.

By safe-start do you mean.
When it the computer first boots and it says windows is starting ... press f8 and then a text menu comes up
select "safe-mode."

This mode does not load ati drivers at all, it loads generic svga drivers that should work for any card. If it is still crashing after trying this, its either a hardware problem or your os is really hosed.

Here's a few things to try:

• Let the computer sit for a few hours and try starting it again. (You've probably already tried this) A couple months ago my computer was overheating all the time and I kept getting a pink frozen screen. The heatsinks shipped with your computer may not be adequate for running it non-stop.
  
• If you have access to another monitor, try switching it out like Molders said. Also try degaussing the one you are using, should be one of the options in the monitor menu (mine has an icon that looks like a horseshoe magnet)
  
• Use your Windows XP, 2k CD and boot the system off the cd. If it works from that its a problem with your software (saves you $250 on a new vid card) If this doesn't work 99% chance your vid card or RAM went bad. I've seen bad ram chips do some very strange things. If it works you may need to reformat for it to run smoothly again. If you need to save your data, I can tell you how to set up two hard drives if you don't already know how.
  
• If you have an old vid card lying around, you could swap it out. Use ATI's delete driver program, its on their site and then put your 9700 back in and see if it will work after that. If your computer is still under warranty it might void it if you start poking around inside.
  
• Kick it really hard, and speak to it very menacingly. Sacrifice blood and dance around it a few times mumbling in Aramaic. Hey ... it might work.
  

[Specter]

One more thing I just thought of.

Try posting at the il2 community help forum. They are very knowledgable and have probably seen this before.

[Mölders]

Or it could just be the fact that it wasa Dell computer, custom bulit for you. Why ? From what I noticed when we (my family) bought a computer from MDG, after about two weeks programs would start to stop working. Word, certain games, the internet, I was amzzed my pc even started up. We installed all the Windows O/S's on our pc every time this problem occured. Same result as before. I finally came to the conclusion that the company was screwing up the systems so they could get money when you brought it in. It took about two-three weeks to get the pc back.

[Spinne]

Power Supply.