does this sound like a video card problem?

D

dmehling

Member
About six weeks ago my computer apparently locked up several times while I was watching recorded high-definition programs in Windows Media Center. Then it quit doing this for a while, but locked up again last night. Two of these times the screen simply went blank and I got the no signal detected message on my monitor. I have no idea what was going on with my computer at that point since I could not see anything. The other time this happened, it simply froze the screen and the whole computer was unresponsive. All three times I had to turn off the computer and turn it back on; I couldn't get it to reboot any other way. These lockups occurred after about 30 minutes of TV watching and were accompanied by one of my fans revving up real high. I'm wondering if the cause is from my video card overheating which could explain the loss of the video signal and maybe the reason for the fan spinning so fast. Today I would stop my TV programs after about 30 minutes and wait five minutes before resuming and I had no lockups. Does this sound like the video card or something else?
 
Yes it does. What video card do you use? Do you have enough case fans to circulate the air? Have you opened up the case lately to clean out all the dust bunnies and fans?
 
i second the above comment, it sounds like your gpu is overheating, trying to improve the heat dissipation in the case really does help if not have you tried tuning your card to run more efficiently with a utility like n-tune?
 
I would recommend keeping an eye on your temps when watching videos. You can do this with CPUID's HWMonitor. If you're getting high heat and then freezing, see what you can do about cooling your GPU better. If the heat levels remain ok and it still locks up, you may have a faulty video card that will need to be replaced.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top