first, our computer:
Dell Dimension 8300
running windows xp
version 2002, service pack 1
video card: NVIDIA? (I'm assuming it gets more specific than that, but I couldn't figure it out)
My mom and I have been trouble shooting her computer for the past few days. Our problems started when the moniter was glitchy, pixelated lines would pop up suddenly and the moniter would even black out occasionally. We tried a few minor things like changing the screen resolution but nothing was a permanent fix. Eventually we started getting error reports about the computer "checking file system on c: the type of file is NTFS" "one of your disks needs to be checked for consistency". It also said something about "nv4_disp". I also remember reading something about an infinite loop. When I was searching things before I already read some things about video cards, so I wasn't surprised to find this error report was related to the NVIDIA video card. I can't seem to figure out what card we have more specifically than that, sorry. I tried using the NVIDIA website to scan to see what we have and it couldn't evaluate our system. And if it says somewhere on our computer I can't find where it says it. (I even googled how to find it on your system and followed a few different instructions and can't seem to find it)
We tried updating the drivers, uninstalling the drivers then downloading new ones, this only seemed to make the moniter black out more, and eventually we got the blue screen of death. This read "nv4_disp" again. Then the numbers (I don't know if this is helpful but if it is
0x000000EA (0x81D75020, 0x81D15AD8, 0xF8965CBC, 0x00000001). We kept getting it and couldn't start up the computer so we started it in safe mode and reinstalled windows using the cd that comes with the computer. We were working fine until we tried to update windows (this computer is at least 6 years old so we wanted to get everything up to date first). The moniter just kept turning on and off and it was impossible to use the computer. We once again started in safe mode and reinstalled windows. We tried to just update the video drivers without updating windows but ran into a lot of problems since we only had the windows service pack 1. I don't remember exactly what happened this time but we had to resort to reinstalling windows once again. Right now I'm working on the computer with nothing updated and the video card seems to be working fine. Obviously we want to be able to use the computer to it's full potential though (and completely updated). At this point we figure we just have to replace the video card completely. We want to make sure this will solve the problem though and that this is actually what we have to do. Also, neither of us know anything about video cards so some advice on what to get would be great. Something inexpensive would be wonderful of course, we also don't need anything fancy. We play hoyle board games on this computer and that is about it for gaming.
So please let us know: will replacing the video card be the solution? which video card would be best for us?
Thanks so much for any input!
Dell Dimension 8300
running windows xp
version 2002, service pack 1
video card: NVIDIA? (I'm assuming it gets more specific than that, but I couldn't figure it out)
My mom and I have been trouble shooting her computer for the past few days. Our problems started when the moniter was glitchy, pixelated lines would pop up suddenly and the moniter would even black out occasionally. We tried a few minor things like changing the screen resolution but nothing was a permanent fix. Eventually we started getting error reports about the computer "checking file system on c: the type of file is NTFS" "one of your disks needs to be checked for consistency". It also said something about "nv4_disp". I also remember reading something about an infinite loop. When I was searching things before I already read some things about video cards, so I wasn't surprised to find this error report was related to the NVIDIA video card. I can't seem to figure out what card we have more specifically than that, sorry. I tried using the NVIDIA website to scan to see what we have and it couldn't evaluate our system. And if it says somewhere on our computer I can't find where it says it. (I even googled how to find it on your system and followed a few different instructions and can't seem to find it)
We tried updating the drivers, uninstalling the drivers then downloading new ones, this only seemed to make the moniter black out more, and eventually we got the blue screen of death. This read "nv4_disp" again. Then the numbers (I don't know if this is helpful but if it is
0x000000EA (0x81D75020, 0x81D15AD8, 0xF8965CBC, 0x00000001). We kept getting it and couldn't start up the computer so we started it in safe mode and reinstalled windows using the cd that comes with the computer. We were working fine until we tried to update windows (this computer is at least 6 years old so we wanted to get everything up to date first). The moniter just kept turning on and off and it was impossible to use the computer. We once again started in safe mode and reinstalled windows. We tried to just update the video drivers without updating windows but ran into a lot of problems since we only had the windows service pack 1. I don't remember exactly what happened this time but we had to resort to reinstalling windows once again. Right now I'm working on the computer with nothing updated and the video card seems to be working fine. Obviously we want to be able to use the computer to it's full potential though (and completely updated). At this point we figure we just have to replace the video card completely. We want to make sure this will solve the problem though and that this is actually what we have to do. Also, neither of us know anything about video cards so some advice on what to get would be great. Something inexpensive would be wonderful of course, we also don't need anything fancy. We play hoyle board games on this computer and that is about it for gaming. So please let us know: will replacing the video card be the solution? which video card would be best for us?
Thanks so much for any input!
