It just got worse, a lot worse

[Stecher]

Remember that scene from Office Space where they take the computer equipment off to the side of the road and destroy it with a bat? Well, I'm really close to doing that. As stated earlier, the new video card functioned without distortions in CoD, but it froze up after a few minutes of playing. My optical drive, even after switching plugs is not recognized at all, and AEP is not recognized by old external CD drive. That was a few days ago. Last night I had my computer on Stand By when I went to bed. Some time during the night the keyboard was stepped on by a cat I assume because when I got up it was running. I moved the mouse to wake up the screen and it is sitting on the blue user select screen except it is COMPLETELY DISTORTED! I shut down, have to go to school. Get home turn it on and there's a little distortion on the Dell screen, the Windows loading screen it shifted a couple inched to the left, and the user select screen and desktop is all distorted just like it was when this whole thing started a month and a half ago, except there is about twice as much distortion. Also in the clear spots between the bands whatever is there is screwed up too, so I cannot really see to do anything at all, just sorta poke around and guess. I opened the case up again, switched another plug to the optical drive from a different cord bundle, incase the whole thing was bad, and resecured the 9800 card. Plugged everything back in, turned it on and same ole same ole. No optical drive, and can't see a freaking thing. I guess that's what I get for a $400 upgrade. The distortions are worse than they ever were, and now I don't have an optical drive. PERFECT!

[Mölders]

That scene from office space was the best, I laughed all day long just thinking about doing that to the "Macs" we had in our school lab. But this is no laughing matter. You bought a 9800 right? Do you have the right type of power supply, I think it would be 350 w + ? Aside from the other stuff... THis is why you NEVER buy a Dell. As soon as you change hardware, BAM! it refuses to do anything. Had that with our MDG pc a few years ago.

[Specter]

When you installed the new drivers did you remove the old ones? ATI has a program that will remove all existing drivers. I forgot the name but its easy enoug to find on their site. After cleaning the drivers out try installing the newest Cats again.

If that doesn't work, I'd save what you can off the hard drive and reinstall the OS. When you do this try to have as little as you can installed in the machine, only HD and CD-ROM if possible. If your motherboard has an integrated video card use that. After you have a clean install start adding devices one at a time (network card, vid-card, optical drive, etc ...) If the problem starts happening again, you know what device is faulty or conflicting.

Another thing, since you have had the case open and worked on it, get a can of air from the Hardware Store or Radioshack. Blow out the insides really well. You don't want any metal shavings floatiing around shorting out any components.

There may be some truth to what Molders said. I knew back in the 90's Compaq and HP only allowed proprietary hardware in their computers. If you tried to install a component that was not sanctioned by them the computer would lock up and not work.

[Spinne]

Clean the case out. I'd recommend a complete reformat and reinstall of WindowsXP after you've gotten everything you want off the HDD. If you can't access your HDD, try using SSH from another PC or MAC to transfer files over. Have you posted in the Community Support forum yet?