[Tanukitsune]

Recently I started ranting about wanting a new graphic card, which I did, which gave me the blue screen of death, even though I meat the requirements, in the end I had no option but to return it....

I got me another graphic card, and it gave me the same problem...

I then figured out that my motherboard didn't like new components, and the only solution was to format my PC , which usually solves the problem...

At first it did, I played several games at full power with no problem...

Until I played FEAR, then I got the B.S.O.D. and simply assumed I pushed it too far...

But it started to crash more often, up until today when I could even get into Windows....

I'm now back to my original card and everything seems to be O.K...

But I do believe the problem is my motherboard...

Which means I must purchase a new one, with luck my AMD Athlon 64 3000+ will still work in a new one, but it will probably be one that uses PCI-E, actually I think I should get one with this anyway, but that would mean I have to return yet ANOTHER graphic card!!!

Sigh, I formated my PC for nothing, although it's running pretty smooth now...

[nikoniko]

Are you sure it's not a power supply issue? Even many power supplies rated at 350 watts and above don't operate reliably under high loads. A couple of years ago on Tom's Hardware (I think) there was an expose of the shoddy quality of numerous power supplies, finding that many (in fact, the majority) far underperform compared to their ratings. Many a 300 watt supply failed at 240 watts or greater, and some of the 400 watt ones could barely handle a load of 300. If you can successfully operate a less demanding offboard card (sounds like you can - or are you using onboard video?), then it is almost surely a power issue. Otherwise, then I'd suspect the motherboard.

Cheers,
doroposo

[Tanukitsune]

I have a 400W power supply, but it¡f it's the power supply, why would it take so long too crash?

EDIT: Speaking of the devil, I've got my old card back and I just got the B.S.O.D. while simply having the screensaver on!

[Dale Baldwin]

My PC at work used to crash randomly with the windows error pointing me at the nvidia driver of the graphics card. I swapped out the power supply back then and it hasn't crashed once since doing so.

Talking of power supplies, I'm stuck on a laptop right now since my desktop's power supply fan packed up a few days ago

[Tanukitsune]

I get an MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION (0x00000009C) error and itsays that if I installed new software or harware I should remove it because it's either faulty or incompatible...

[nikoniko]

A few things you could try:

- Install the drivers which came with your card rather than updated drivers from the internet. Sometimes new drivers break previous stability.

- A long shot but worth looking into: if your new cards were Nvidia, see if the Nvidia IDE drivers got installed. They've been known to cause problems for some people, so replace them with your motherboard's previous drivers and see if your system becomes more stable.

- Connect the power connector from the graphics card to a different connector on the power supply (usually there are at least two to choose from). If the card isn't getting enough power through its power supply connection, the only place it can get it is through the AGP slot, and if there isn't enough there (which is likely a lot of the time with the newer AGP cards).... *crash*.

Although I've seen more bad power supplies cause these problems, it could be a motherboard issue as you suspect. Some flawed motherboards don't handle high AGP load well, delivering less current to the card than it needs, which would cause the same error. If you buy a new motherboard, make sure the store you get it from has a good return policy, in case it doesn't fix your problem. For that reason, I'd suggest buying it in a store rather than online, even if it's cheaper to get it online. If you don't have a store with a good motherboard return policy, then for the heck of it try replacing the power supply first - since almost any store would take back a power supply, even those which wouldn't take a returned motherboard. That way you could at least rule out that possibility before getting stuck with a new motherboard. Another advantage is that it only takes a minute or two to pop in a new supply, and XP won't complain about being on new hardware. Once you put in a new motherboard, XP will start bothering you to reactivate Windows, possibly refusing to let you do anything else until you do.

- Since you're thinking to replace the motherboard anyway, you could try this: if your motherboard BIOS supports voltage editing, you could add 0.1 or 0.2 (max) to the AGP voltage. For some people, this stabilizes the voltage and keeps a demanding card working okay.

[Tanukitsune]

Since I'm back to my previous card and I still get crashes, I'm not really sure what to do...

Maybe the Nvidia IDE are still installed somewhere? I did use the Nvidia IDE removal...

I've been trying to find out if my PowerColor 400W Power Supply is just shoddy or not but there aren't that many power suplly reviews, it's the only kind of power suplplies arounf here ayway...

Everything is technically the same as before, except I didn't re-format my PC after putting the old card in...

Whatever I'm gonna do I'll do it tomorrow, but I only have 10 days to return the graphic card if it's faulty or not compatible...

[Mattsius]

I've also have way too much problems with my new PC. It's totally new though.
We didn't get any graphics input and since it was a PCI-E graphics card we hadn't any other cards to try. My bro bought an ancient PCI card and it worked, so the problem seemed to be in the PCI-E card.
We sent it back to the shop, but they didn't find any problems with it. It could still be a compatibility problem, so we bought another card instead. Same problem though: No graphics input.
I'm guessing the problem might be with the motherboard or the power supply, but it might be more complicated than that. It's been around two months since we first ordered all the computer parts, so I think the time has come to send the whole machine back to the shop, so that they will figure it out. Will cost a bit, but I think it will be worth it at this point.

I have to have this new PC up and running by the time Dreamfall comes out.