The Computer Problems thread!

[Destina Faroda]

I think my video card is screwed.

Well, it's either that or a virus.  I have all these lines on my screen, and I tried to install some new drivers, but that didn't do any good.

It's not the monitor, I know that much...

Um...HELP!

[xHaZxMaTx]

Lines?  Vertical, horizontal, diagonal?  I had a problem once where I couldn't right click anything and a little line appeared instead.  It was caused by a virus, and I had to reinstall Windows.

[Destina Faroda]

Horizontal mostly.

I can operate the computer well enough.  The video just seems shot.

[xHaZxMaTx]

What are your computer specs?

It sounds like (after having thought about it) your monitor may not plugged in entirely or correctly.

[Destina Faroda]

I actually didn't try the monitor, but I will now.

I can't be bothered with my computer's specs.  1GB of Ram.  3.2 GHz pentium processor.  Video Card is an ATI  RADEON 9800 Pro.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Well, it's a fairly new card, so I would say it's either a monitor/card connection problem, a card/motherboard connection problem, or a driver problem.

[mini-lion]

good call Haz, could be getting hot as well, sounds like its not been seated correctly , take it out and try again.

[bill]

ZOMG!

Help is good, but not that much help! How do I solve this? (I killed the process, but it comes back daily)

[Aridas]

All you really have to do is type in the program name in google and you'll see... really, is google so hard for some of these things?

Maybe this'll help, though: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=839017

[Azlan]

Why does my ASUS A8N SLI Delux board not really support DDR600 Ram?  The instability is staggering...

[Aridas]

The A8N SLI Deluxe is a piece of crap in general. (trust me.)

[Azlan]

The A8N SLI Deluxe is a piece of crap in general. (trust me.)

I don't trust you.  ASUS is okay in their board manufactoring, the ones you wish to avoid are FOXCONN, Biostar, Albatron, ECS and Gigabyte.

The A8N Deluxe receives about a 4 out of 5 in general review... the Northbridge fan seems to be a point of failure.

[Nikki]

...

Xze's Scanner isn't scanning greens or browns...

i think my printer AND scanner is dead... 

[Aridas]

The A8N SLI Deluxe is a piece of crap in general. (trust me.)

I don't trust you. ASUS is okay in their board manufactoring, the ones you wish to avoid are FOXCONN, Biostar, Albatron, ECS and Gigabyte.

The A8N Deluxe receives about a 4 out of 5 in general review... the Northbridge fan seems to be a point of failure.

A8N SLI Deluxe has a few specific quirks which makes using the computer frustrating at best. I'm pretty sure it's board specific, because when I look up said problems, the people with those problems also have the same board.

[topher chee]

My comp is really friggin slow.  I was thinking of buying RAM or an external hardrive, which is a better deal?

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

It depends what the problem is, topher. if the problem is you don't ahve enough ram in there for what you do, then buying an external hard drive won't help much.

If the problem is the machine is full of music or something that you can put on the external drive, then extra RAM isn't going to do much.


More details, please?

[topher chee]

its not even that, i have hardly anything on my comp.,  mostly programs and stuff, but even so its not that many, which is why i was going to buy RAm, i have to let the comp sit for like 10 min for it to start up properly cause its so friggin slow.  i have a dsl connection, so my internet isnt able to perform at its best

[Vidar]

Try running a virusscanner and an anti-spyware tool to get rid of those. Spyware and virii can destroy performance.
Also check what applications you are running, and what processes are consuming a lot of memory / cpu time in the taskmanager.
Also, we might be able to help you better if you post your comp specs (cpu, ram, video card, etc) and what kind of programs you are running.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

One of the other things is what it actually starts up when it starts.

You may also find dma is something that you should check - run dmacheck (google for it, it's on MS's knowledgebase..)

[Azlan]

You may wish to also flush and subsequently register DNS, as well as refresh the user and machine policies.

If you have two hard drives, move your paging file off to the drive that does not have windows installed on it or if you have sufficient RAM, kill the paging file altogether. 

There are a host of services you can kill as well that aren't needed, but that requires a bit more knowledge of what you need.

The spyware scan is a good idea, periodic defrags and a full scandisk might be good.

That's all I can think of at this second... must run.

[topher chee]

if you guys need more info, just tell me what it is and perhaps how to get it

[Azlan]

I don't recommend running WinXP on any less then 512mb of RAM.  This will definitely be a performance point of contention.

[Aridas]

your computer asplode... Yeah, I've had it going with 256, and it was painful.

[Azlan]

Not to mention a losy Celeron... this thing kind of reminds me of a Dell...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

it's a 2.2G, tho. Shouldn't be too bad, if you fix the memory issue.

I'd suggest going to www.crucial.com and seeing how much extra memory for it would cost. It's probably not too much...

That's likely to be your first problem :-)

[Vidar]

Wow, I didn't think computers with less then 256 MB of RAM still existed. My graphics card has that much RAM.

If your computer has an onboard ( == integrated) graphics card, it will steal some memory  from the 128 MB of RAM. I imagine running XP on this system is a painful experience, like being dragged naked across 2 miles of broken glass.  D:

Buy new memory. Check your computer manual to see what kind of RAM is compatible with your system, and to see how many DIMM-slots you have left. Don't  skimp on the RAM: more is better, and more reliable is better. As with most things in life the guideline "cheap stuff isn't any good, and good stuff isn't cheap" is applicable.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

crucial manage good and relatively cheap.

I certainly haven't had any issues with the ECC stuff I've bought from them, but desktop stuff is, admittedly, another matter - I haven't bought any, so can't comment...

ECC, I've bought over 60 DIMMs, and have been running some of them for upwards of 2-3 years, so there's a reasonable range there.

As always, your mileage may vary. :-)

[mini-lion]

You could of course go for some virtual memory, convert some of your hard drive to memory. May help a little bit

[Aridas]

If that was an alternative, people wouldn't need more RAM. virtual memory does NOT exist for performance...

[topher chee]

no do you guys feel my pain?!
how much RAM should I get?